THE  AMERICAN  GIRL 
MER.COMMUNITY 


gy  MARGARET  SLATTERY 


•ma 


THE    AMERICAN    GIRL,   AND 
HER    COMMUNITY 


THE  AMERICAN  GIRL 
and  HER  COMMUNITY 

BY 

MARGARET  SLATTERY 


Author  of  "  The  Girl  in  Her  Teens," 

"  The  Girl  and  Her  Religion," 

"Just  Over  the  Hill,"  etc. 


THE  PILGRIM   PRESS 
BOSTON  CHICAGO 


COPYRIGHT    1918 

BY  FRANK  M.  SHELDON 


THE   PILGRIM   PRESS 
BOSTON 


DEDICATED   TO 

Hmertcan  Girl 


1781538 


CONTENTS 

PAOB 

THE  AMERICAN  GIRL 3 

HER  COMMUNITY 17 

THE  RURAL  GIRL 27 

THE  SUBURBAN  GIRL 47 

THE  CITT  GIRL 63 

THE  BUSINESS  GIRL 75 

THE  SCHOOLGIRL 91 

THE  GIRL  AT  HOME 103 

THE  COMMUNITY — DEBTOR  AND  CREDITOR  123 

THE  NEW  AMERICAN  GIRL 145 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  .  167 


I 

THE  AMERICAN  GIRL 


THE   AMERICAN    GIRL   AND 
HER    COMMUNITY 


I.     THE    AMERICAN    GIRL 

THE  American  Girl?  She  is  discussed  so 
often  in  the  current  literature  of  both 
her  own  and  other  lands  that  one  finds 
it  easy  to  persuade  himself  that  she  is  a  dis- 
tinct and  definite  type  which  may  be  easily 
photographed,  painted,  catalogued  and  filed 
away  for  reference.  The  challenge  which  she 
offers  to  the  thinking  people  of  her  day  lies, 
however,  in  the  fact  that  she  is  not  a  distinct 
type.  It  is  true  that  the  American  girl  may 
have  certain  special  characteristics  that  very 
definitely  set  her  apart  from  the  girl  of 
Germany,  England,  France,  Italy,  China  or 
Japan.  It  is  true  that  one  may  say  with 
assurance,  even  after  very  brief  observation, 
"made  in  America."  But  a  mistake  has  been 
made  by  those  who  have  tabulated  the  special 
specimen  of  girlhood  under  their  personal  ob- 
servation as  the  American  Girl.  They  have 
planned  her  education  and  training,  and  marked 


4         The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

out  the  place  she  is  to  occupy  when  she  finds  her 
niche  in  the  everyday  life  of  the  world,  as  if, 
having  met  her  special  needs  and  solved  her 
problems,  they  have  done  their  full  duty  by  all 
girlhood  that  chances  to  find  itself  a  part  of 
American  life.  The  fact  is  that  the  American  Girl 
is  a  composite  of  all  the  daughters  of  all  the 
people.  To  face  it  frankly  is  to  make  one's  soul 
tingle  at  the  enormity  of  the  demand  made  upon 
any  nation  confronted  with  such  a  girl  problem — 
for  at  the  root  of  all  problems  lies  clear  and 
distinct  the  girl  problem.  She  is  potential 
womanhood.  She  makes  the  present  and  deter- 
mines the  future.  As  she  lives,  plays,  works, 
dreams,  thinks  and  acts,  so  does  the  race.  Man 
cannot  rise  above  her  standards  nor  go  far  be- 
yond her  ethics,  nor  can  he  ever  fully  escape 
from  the  religion  she  teaches.  When  she  awakens, 
nations  stir  in  their  sleep  and  ask  in  troubled 
tones,  "What  is  the  matter?"  When  she  is  quiet 
and  fully  content,  they  sleep  on.  The  American 
girl  present  and  future  is  the  American  problem, 
and  it  is  the  part  of  wisdom  for  all  who  bear  the 
welfare  of  the  nation  on  their  hearts  to  add  their 
efforts  to  those  who  are  giving  time  and  thought 
to  her.  With  profit  to  ourselves,  and,  if  we  are 
wise,  with  greater  profit  to  her,  we  may  with 


The  American  Girl  6 

sympathy,  longing  and  eagerness  ask  her  if  she 
will  let  us  know  her ;  not  study  her  as  if  she  were 
a  problem  and  a  specimen,  but  get  acquainted 
with  her,  that  we  may  see  what  she  has  to  give 
and  what  we  must  give  in  return. 

On  that  blustering  March  night,  the  east  wind 
blowing  in  over  Boston  Harbor  made  the  North 
Pole  seem  just  around  the  corner,  and  I  was  aston- 
ished by  the  number  of  girls  from  sixteen  to 
twenty-five  who  had  braved  it  to  come  out  to 
their  club  for  a  lecture.  I  had  been  told  that 
they  were  a  club  of  "typical  American  working 
girls  in  the  trades  not  requiring  skilled  labor." 
During  the  music  and  afterward  at  the  "recep- 
tion" I  could  observe  them  at  close  range.  Typi- 
cal American  girls !  The  one  who  introduced  me 
was  bright,  interesting,  very  good  to  look  at. 
She  was  born  in  Scotland,  and  still  bore  definite 
marks  of  the  homeland  in  her  fascinating  accent. 
Her  father  had  recently  become  a  naturalized 
citizen;  three  of  the  family  of  five  children  were 
born  in  America.  One  of  the  girls  who  played 
was  a  Russian  Hebrew.  Her  technique  was  poor, 
her  temperament  and  appreciation  were  wonder- 
ful, and  her  ambition  to  secure  an  education 
and  "a  chance  to  do  something  in  music"  was 
pathetic.  Among  the  other  girls  of  the  club  was 


6        The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

a  Bohemian  who  spoke  two  languages  besides  her 
native  tongue  and  her  acquired  English.  She 
was  an  evident  favorite  and,  the  girls  said,  "kept 
things  lively."  During  the  evening  she  said,  "If 
only  I  could  have  stayed  in  school!  I  wanted  so 
much  to  be  a  teacher."  A  quiet,  well-poised 
Armenian  girl  of  eighteen  attracted  my  atten- 
tion. Her  two  younger  brothers  were  at  work 
and  during  the  year  past  her  parents  have  per- 
mitted her  to  keep  her  wages.  With  the  help  of 
what  she  has  saved  she  can  work  her  way  through 
a  mission  training  school.  She  will  take  courses 
in  nursing  and  hygiene,  and  hopes  through  the 
church  to  be  of  real  service  to  her  own  and  other 
peoples  in  crowded  city  districts.  In  the  club 
were  two  colored  girls,  both  workers  in  the  fac- 
tory. They  sang  a  duet  and  did  it  very  well. 
They  were  hoping  that  some  "better  job  would 
turn  up." 

The  next  day  I  spent  a  delightful  twilight 
hour  with  a  girl  of  about  twenty  who  had  been 
described  to  me  as  "ideal,"  and  her  enthusiastic 
admirer  had  added,  "She  comes  from  a  wonderful 
old  New  England  family  with  a  splendid  history. 
I  like  to  think  of  her  as  the  typical  American 
girl." 

She  was  beautiful  with  the  beauty  that  it  takes 


The  American  Girl  1 

generations  to  give.  Beneath  the  fine  restraint 
I  could  detect  the  modern  passion  to  be  of  real 
service  in  a  real  world.  As  we  stood  in  the  dark- 
ness looking  out  at  the  river,  its  banks  dotted 
with  innumerable  lights,  and  I  watched,  fasci- 
nated, a  searchlight  bring  out  into  bold  relief 
against  the  sky  the  dome  of  the  State  House,  I 
heard  that  quiet  voice,  tense  with  emotion,  say- 
ing, "I  think  I  am  willing  to  give  all  I  have  to 
the  girls  of  this  city,  if  only  some  one  can  show 
me  how  to  do  it.  I  want  it  to  be  a  real  service. 
I  want  it  to  help  make  right  the  things  that  are 
fundamentally  wrong." 

She  sent  me  to  the  station  in  her  car.  It  was 
nearly  six  o'clock  and  very  cold.  A  stream  of 
people,  young  and  old,  rushed  through  the 
waiting-room.  As  I  entered  the  concourse  I  saw 
a  group  of  girls  returning  to  the  suburbs  from 
work.  Two  of  them  wore  very  short  skirts,  high 
laced  shoes  that  once  were  white,  coats  of  fash- 
ionable cut  but  thin  and  of  poor  material;  they 
all  wore  earrings,  and  hair  and  hats  were  "the 
proper  thing."  "Gosh!"  said  a  strident  voice, 
"why  don't  the  train  back  in?  I'm  froze.  I'm 
saving  my  lunch  money  and  I'm  starved."  "Sure, 
I'm  goin'  tonight  if  I  ever  get  home,"  she  added 
in  answer  to  a  friend's  query.  The  phrase  "typi- 


•        Tht  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

cal  American  girl"  flashed  into  my  mind,  and  th« 
contrasts  made  me  smile  in  spite  of  the  deep  sig- 
nificance of  all  I  had  seen  and  heard  that  day. 

The  last  of  the  week  found  me  a  guest  of  a 
Business  Women's  Club,  and  I  have  never  spent 
a  more  interesting  evening.  These  girls,  young, 
intelligent,  well-dressed,  efficient,  successful  and 
womanly,  seemed  almost  the  fulfilment  of  one's 
desires,  and  I  felt  a  sense  of  satisfaction  when 
another  guest  called  them  representative  Ameri- 
can girls. 

During  the  following  month  or  more  I  spent  an 
hour  with  a  girl  not  yet  twenty  whose  father  is  not 
living  and  whose  ambitious  mother  has  marked 
out  a  climbing  pathway  for  her  daughter.  Th« 
mother  was  shocked,  disturbed  and  puzzled  by 
the  discovery  of  some  of  her  daughter's  views. 
She  is  herself  a  church  woman  of  the  formal  sort, 
never  for  a  moment  remiss  in  any  of  her  duties. 
"I  cannot  understand  my  daughter,"  she  said  in 
a  pained  voice.  "I  have  sent  her  to  the  best 
schools,  she  has  been  carefully  trained,  yet,"  in 
a  tone  of  utter  contempt,  "she  uses  cigarettes, 
she  dismisses  her  chaperon,  she  insists  upon  going 
to  all  sorts  of  queer  places,  and  yesterday,"  she 
struggled  for  control  of  her  voice,  "she  told  me 
the  most  astounding  things  which  she  actually 


The  American  Girl  9 

believes !  She  says  she  believes  in  trial  marriages, 
thinks  in  most  cases  divorce  is  a  perfectly  natural 
and  very  proper  thing,  that  all  women  should 
work,  even  if  they  marry;  think  of  it!  She  says 
that  all  the  girls  except  the  'saints'  and  the 
'frumps'  think  these  terrible  things.  What  will 
become  of  our  girls  if  they  do?  Where  did  she 
get  such  ideas?" 

In  talking  with  the  girl  I  found  that  her  ideas 
were  even  more  advanced  than  her  mother  knew. 
"Poor  mother,"  she  said,  "I  do  shock  her  so.  She 
simply  cannot  understand  the  American  girl  of 
the  present." 

The  American  girl — it  hurled  itself  again  into 
my  consciousness.  Is  she  this  also? 

The  varied  groups  pass  before  me,  now  twenty 
or  more  girls  gathered  in  a  little  country 
church  away  up  in  the  hills  for  a  girls'  confer- 
ence, strong,  serious,  many  of  them  crude,  all  of 
them  earnest  and  interested — one  could  not  fail 
to  be  impressed  by  their  reliability,  their  great 
possibilities  and  worth,  with  the  promise  of  hope 
for  the  future  wrapped  up  in  them.  Equally  in- 
teresting, dependable  and  self-reliant  was  the 
group  in  the  beautiful  college  town:  girls  for 
the  most  part  with  high  ideals  and  great  dreams 
that  kept  action  sane  and  normal.  I  was  told 


10      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

as  I  left  for  the  station  that  I  had  been  talking 
with  a  group  of  typical  American  girls.  The 
memory  of  their  fresh  young  faces,  their  keen, 
alert  minds,  made  the  future  look  bright.  A 
little  more  than  twenty-four  hours  and  I  was 
with  the  girls  in  a  prosperous  suburban  town. 
They  were  between  eighteen  and  twenty-two,  and 
from  homes  where  all  the  necessities  and  many 
of  the  luxuries  of  life  were  theirs  for  the  asking. 
Three  in  the  group  were  soon  to  be  married,  and 
the  rest  had  their  castles-in-the-air.  It  was  a 
wholesome,  jolly  group,  interested  in  its  own 
pleasures  but  responsive  to  the  need  of  other 
girls  less  fortunate.  My  hostess  said  it  did  her 
heart  good  to  watch  them.  "The  American  girl 
does  not  know  how  fortunate  she  is,  does  she?" 
she  said. 

Then  it  was  Sunday  morning.  As  I  was  walk- 
ing to  the  station,  Elizabeth  passed  me,  giving 
a  smiling  greeting  through  the  window  of  her  car. 
Every  Sunday  morning  finds  her  up  early  and 
on  her  way  to  a  nine-thirty  Sunday-school  class  of 
Italian  girls.  Elizabeth  speaks  easily  in  Italian, 
to  the  delight  of  the  fathers  and  mothers  who 
help  keep  regular  the  attendance  of  these  girls. 
While  I  was  waiting  for  my  train,  a  girl  of  seven- 
teen or  eighteen  stopped  to  buy  the  Sunday  news- 


The  American  Girl  11 

paper.  She  tucked  two  huge  editions  under  her 
arm.  In  one  hand  she  had  a  paper  bag  and  a 
small  box,  having  stopped  at  the  delicatessen.  It 
was  easy  to  see  how  she  would  spend  the  day  in 
the  gray,  unattractive  boarding-house  the  other 
side  of  the  tracks.  In  town  I  found  fascinating 
groups  of  girls  on  their  way  to  Sunday  schools 
and  to  churches,  and  at  the  transfer  station  a  gay 
group  with  their  skates  over  their  shoulders  or 
their  skating  shoes  wrapped  in  green  and  brown 
covers.  The  afternoon  found  me  on  the  way  to 
the  hospital,  and  with  me  a  teacher  of  a  class  of 
girls  of  sixteen  who  were  going  out  to  sing  and 
give  flowers  to  the  convalescents. 

Through  the  parks  and  along  the  drive,  scores 
of  automobiles,  from  which  young  faces  beamed, 
rushed  past ;  at  five  o'clock  the  fashionable  vesper 
service  had  its  share.  In  the  early  evening  I  sat 
in  the  restaurant.  Several  young  men  and 
women  were  at  the  various  tables,  but  I  was 
attracted  by  a  girl  who  sat  alone.  Her  face  was 
sad  and  she  sighed  repeatedly  while  waiting  for 
her  order.  When  it  came,  she  ate  as  if  it  were  a 
duty  that  she  must  perform,  and  finally  canceled 
what  she  had  ordered  for  dessert,  sat  with  her 
hand  over  her  eyes  for  awhile,  then,  passing  out, 
reached  the  door  as  I  did.  She  was  neatly 


12      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

dressed  and  attractive.  I  smiled  at  her,  but  she 
paid  no  attention.  Passing  into  the  street,  I 
walked  slowly  along  behind  her.  She  stopped  a 
moment  before  a  motion  picture  house,  examined 
the  boards,  walked  almost  past,  then,  suddenly 
turning,  purchased  a  ticket  and  went  in.  Down 
the  street  a  lighted  cross  on  a  church  stood  out 
against  the  black  sky;  over  the  door  the  word 
"Welcome"  blazed  out.  The  chimes  at  the  cathe- 
dral were  playing  "Nearer,  My  God,  to  Thee." 
Two  young  girls  who  could  not  have  been  more 
than  sixteen  stepped  up  to  two  young  men  who 
were  standing  on  the  edge  of  the  sidewalk,  hands 
in  their  pockets.  "Go  on,  take  us  in,  it's  a  good 
show,"  I  heard.  One  remonstrated,  the  other 
said,  "Oh,  come  on,  let's  give  the  kids  a  good 
time."  When  I  turned  to  look  back,  they  were 
walking  down  the  street  together. 

The  American  Girl — what  shall  we  do  with 
her,  what  can  we  do  for  her?  How  shall  we  cul- 
tivate and  develop  all  the  great  good  in  her? 
How  shall  we  starve  the  undesirable  things  with 
which  her  times,  her  environment,  her  inheritance 
have  stamped  her? 

The  task  is  so  great,  the  need  so  varied,  that 
as  individuals  we  can  do  little,  as  separate  or- 
ganizations not  much  more;  neither  home,  school 


The  American  Girl  13 

nor  church  can  do  it  alone.  If  we  are  to  serve 
her  effectively  we  must  do  it  together.  The  re- 
sponsibility for  her  future  depends  not  upon  one 
but  upon  all.  In  the  awakened,  challenged,  im- 
passioned community,  willing  to  learn  the  facts 
and  face  them,  eager  to  modify  and  change  them, 
lies  the  hope  for  the  preservation  and  conserva- 
tion of  what  is  best  in  all  the  daughters  of  all  the 
people. 


n 

HER  COMMUNITY 


HER  COMMUNITY 

CONTINUALLY  before  us  as  we  study  her 
community,  we  must  keep  the  definition  of 
the  American  girl  which,  in  the  previous 
chapter,  we  concluded  was,  in  view  of  the  facts, 
the  only  one  adequate.  The  American  girl,  we 
decided,  is  a  composite  of  all  the  daughters  of  all 
the  people.  Therefore  every  type  of  community 
which  the  past  has  produced  and  the  civilization 
of  the  present  has  accepted,  is  doing  its  share  in 
making  the  American  girl,  desirable  and  unde- 
sirable, what  she  is.  The  casual  student  of 
sociology  and  economics  who  views  life  and 
assembles  facts  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
pessimist  believes  that  the  American  community 
will  never  be  able  to  find  its  soul.  He  believes 
that  it  will  continue  to  be  dominated  by  the 
few  who  will  prosper  and  feed  upon  the  many, 
that  forms  of  graft  will  change  but  that  graft 
must  always  be — that  all  forms  of  sin  which 
bring  reward  in  gold  will  be  tolerated  and 
encouraged,  that  government  of  the  people,  by 
the  people,  for  the  welfare  of  all  the  people  is  a 
dream.  The  casual  student,  by  nature  and  tem- 
perament an  optimist,  tells  us  that  the  American 


18      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

community  is  on  the  up  grade  and  that  in  time 
all  the  regrettable  things  in  the  life  of  today  will 
take  care  of  themselves.  He  leaves  them  to  do 
so,  making  no  perceptible  effort  to  hasten  the 
time. 

Neither  the  pessimist  nor  the  temperamental 
optimist  has  much  to  contribute  to  the  solution 
of  the  problem.  Only  the  student  who,  looking 
frankly  into  the  past  and  viewing  the  facts  of 
the  present  from  a  standpoint  as  far  as  possible 
unbiased,  is  willing  to  attempt  solutions,  and 
eager  to  test  constructive  plans,  is  of  real 
value  to  the  American  girl.  To  this  class  be- 
long the  men  and  women  interested  in  commis- 
sion government,  in  a  city  manager,  in  referen- 
dum and  recall,  in  the  community  survey,  in 
citizens'  public  welfare  leagues,  in  the  play- 
ground, the  recreational  centers,  the  public 
baths,  the  town  improvement  societies,  the  police- 
women, the  scores  of  constructive  agencies  asking 
to  be  tested.  To  increase  the  number  of  men 
and  women  in  the  rural,  urban  and  suburban 
communities  who  are  willing  to  take  advance 
steps,  to  test  plans,  honestly  to  attempt  to  solve 
the  problems,  every  effort  of  those  to  whom  the 
present  and  future  of  the  American  girl  is  a  vital 
concern  should  be  directed. 


Her  Community  19 

Although  varying  in  detail,  the  problem  of  the 
country  and  the  city  is  at  heart  the  same:  "How 
can  all  the  people  of  the  community  be  made  to 
realize  that  they  have,  as  individuals  and  as 
groups,  a  definite  duty  to  all  the  daughters  of  all 
the  people?"  This  duty  centers  in  the  home — in 
all  the  homes — those  that  have  daughters,  those 
that  have  sons,  those  that  are  childless,  those 
that  have  an  abundance  and  those  that  know  the 
pain  of  poverty.  All  the  daughters  of  all  the 
people  find  it  exceedingly  hard  ever  to  escape 
from  the  stamp  of  the  home.  If  the  home  could 
rid  itself  of  its  glaring  weaknesses,  the  community 
would  soon  become  a  good  place  in  which  to  live. 
The  American  home  of  today  seems  to  find  itself 
utterly  unable  to  establish  a  right  scale  of  values. 
In  action,  if  not  in  word,  it  teaches  its  daughters 
a  smug  selfishness,  trains  them  to  pay  other 
people  to  amuse  them  rather  than  to  find  ways  of 
amusing  themselves,  leads  them  to  estimate  the 
things  of  life  in  terms  of  money,  teaches  them  by 
example  to  recognize  and  demand  class  distinc- 
tions, leads  them  to  devote  the  larger  proportion 
of  time  to  the  things  least  real  and  lasting — and 
all  these  things  it  does  in  semi-conscious  or  un- 
conscious fashion.  The  American  home  has  not 
waked  up  to  the  changed  order  of  our  day,  and 


20      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

so  wastes  time  in  lamenting  the  facts  instead  of 
courageously  attempting  to  change  them. 

The  country  girl  toiling  for  a  pittance  in  the 
city's  great  industrial  machine  breaks  one's  heart 
— but  the  stream  of  country  pilgrims  does  not 
diminish;  the  suburban  girl  spending  all  her 
physical  energy  in  commuting  morning  and  night 
and  giving  the  hours  meant  for  the  rest  of  body 
and  mind  to  the  pleasures  which  the  day  cannot 
provide,  calls  aloud  for  the  sympathy  of  those 
who  think — still,  the  numbers  increase  with  every 
year;  the  subterfuges,  the  sacrifices  of  girlhood 
engaged  in  the  climb  for  society  leadership  move 
one  to  profoundest  pity — yet  countless  girls 
weave  their  day-dreams  and  build  their  air- 
castles  on  the  hope  of  meeting  success  in  this 
sort  of  adventure.  The  solution  of  all  these 
difficulties  lies  in  the  awakened  homes  of  every 
community,  and  the  challenging  task  is  the  re- 
education of  mothers — all  the  mothers  of  the 
community.  It  must  be  performed  by  the  en- 
lightened few  joined  together  in  devoted  and 
unselfish  service  for  the  sake  of  the  many.  The 
little  group  of  those  who  see  must  call  to  its  aid 
the  private  and  public  schools,  the  preachers  of 
every  name,  the  newspapers  of  every  persuasion, 
and  ultimately  the  producers  of  all  the  literature 


Her  Community  21 

upon  which  the  American  girl  feeds  her  mind  and 
builds  her  ideals. 

The  church  also  must  be  awakened  to  the  fact 
that  the  problem  cannot  be  solved  without  it.  It 
owes  a  duty  to  all  the  daughters  of  all  the  people, 
and  it  must  act  in  its  individual  and  united  power 
before  even  the  beginning  of  the  solution  can  be 
made.  There  are  some  things  that  the  individual 
country  church  can  do  for  its  girls — they  are 
few.  There  are  many  things  that  the  churches 
of  a  rural  community  united  in  purpose  and  plan 
can  do.  There  are  many  things  that  an  indi- 
vidual city  church  can  do  for  its  girls,  there  are 
a  great  many  more  that  the  city  churches  of 
every  name  united  upon  a  definite  plan  of  help- 
fulness, protection  and  inspiration  can  do.  But 
the  church,  like  the  home,  must  be  reeducated. 
At  present  it  provides  a  program  more  or  less 
iron-clad.  It  says,  "When  the  chimes  ring  out, 
or  the  bells  peal  forth  in  the  clear  air  on  a 
Sunday  morning,  come  to  us,  take  part  in  the 
order  of  service  we  have  planned  for  you,  listen 
to  the  music  others  sing  to  you,  attend  the  Sun- 
day school  and  study  the  lessons  we  have  selected 
for  you,  give  your  money  to  the  causes  we  have 
chosen  for  you;  if  you  do  not  like  what  we  have 
prepared,  we  are  truly  sorry,  but  we  have  done 


22      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

the  best  we  could."  The  church  must  be  re- 
educated so  that  it  can  ask  all  the  daughters  of 
all  the  people  what  they  like  in  a  church  service, 
what  sort  of  help  they  long  for,  what  they  enjoy 
singing,  what  subjects  and  courses  they  would  be 
interested  to  study,  what  they  need  most,  at  what 
hours  they  can  best  come  to  worship  God.  That 
is,  the  church  must  be  retrained  so  that  it  can 
recognize  the  fact  that  its  chief  task  is  to  follow 
its  Master.  He  met  needs;  sometimes  it  was 
physical — the  pain  of  the  body;  often  it  was 
mental, — the  struggle  of  the  mind;  most  of  the 
time  it  was  spiritual, — the  hunger  of  the  soul; 
whatever  it  was,  he  answered  it. 

The  town  and  city  officials  alike  must  be  made 
to  realize  that  the  problem  cannot  be  met  with- 
out them — that  as  individuals  and  as  a  governing 
body  they  are  responsible  for  the  place  in  which 
all  the  daughters  of  all  the  people  must  live. 
Perhaps  this  is  the  hardest  task  of  all,  for  officials 
are  busy,  so  busy  they  have  not  time  to  think 
of  the  characters  being  formed  in  those  who  are 
to  make  or  unmake  the  America  they  have 
sworn  to  serve.  If  challenged  they  are  prone  to 
point  to  home,  church  and  school,  forgetting 
that  numberless  homes  have  no  control  over 
conditions  which  they,  as  officials,  permit,  sane- 


Her  Community  23 

tion,  encourage;  that  hundreds  of  churches  are 
waging  an  heroic  battle  against  frightful  odds 
which  they,  as  officials,  have  created;  that 
schools  are  led  over  a  beaten  track  or  forced 
along  a  narrow  way  which  they,  as  officials,  have 
marked  out.  The  official  needs  reeducation, 
that  he  may  have  a  new  concept  of  his  impor- 
tance, the  importance  of  one  upon  whom  rests 
personal  responsibility  for  public  welfare  rather 
than  opportunity  for  special  privilege.  The 
officials  need  to  realize  that  when  the  youth  of  a 
community  start  out  to  "see  life,"  they  are  the 
ones  who  determine  what  that  "life"  shall  be, 
and  they  are  responsible  for  its  results  upon  the 
character  of  the  individual  and  the  race. 

One  must  face,  then,  squarely  and  with  cour- 
age the  fact  that  the  task  of  those  interested  in 
the  welfare  of  the  American  girl  is  no  less  than 
that  of  the  reeducation  of  the  community,  so 
that  it  will  assume  the  burden  of  living  each  for 
all  and  all  for  each.  The  burden  is  old,  countless 
ages  old;  it  has  existed  since  God  asked  a  devel- 
oping soul,  "Where  is  thy  brother?"  and  it  an- 
swered, "Am  I  my  brother's  keeper?"  It  was 
constantly  reemphasized  in  the  challenging  words 
of  Christ  concerning  neighbors  and  brothers.  Of 
late  the  burden  has  pressed  more  heavily,  it  has 


24      Thf  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

assumed  larger  proportions  in  the  sight  of  all  men 
and  women,  and  so  we  may  hope  that  the  day  of 
new  birth  for  the  Community  Spirit  draws  near — 
there  is  a  star  in  the  sky,  and  wise  men  seek  it. 
For  the  sake  of  all  the  daugliters  of  all  the  people 
let  us  pray  with  deeper  consecration  and  passion 
that  they  find  it. 


Ill 

THE  RURAL  GIRL 


THE  RURAL  GIRL 

IT  will  be  hard  for  any  one  who  saw  their  faces 
ever   to   forget   the   two   girls   who,   as   they 
alighted  from  a  train  at  the  North  Station 
in  Boston  one  October  night,  were  met  by  the 
police  and  hurried  away  through  a  rapidly  gath- 
ering crowd.    One  was  seventeen,  the  other  fifteen. 
They   were   runaways,   but   through   friends   the 
distraught  parents  were  able  to  trace  them  and 
their  adventure  quickly  ended. 

A  woman  who  had  interested  herself  in  the 
girls  asked  me  if  I  would  have  a  talk  with  them 
before  their  journey  back  to  the  little  town  away 
up  in  the  forsaken  hill  country.  In  that  hour's 
talk  I  discovered  so  much  of  longing,  day- 
dreaming, romancing  and  misconception  that  the 
girl  of  the  lonely  rural  community  seemed  for 
the  moment  the  most  appealing  of  all  girl  prob- 
lems. Starved  was  the  word  I  found  myself  say- 
ing over  and  over. 

Both  girls  were  attractive  with  the  fresh,  un- 
spoiled prettiness  of  the  teen  years.  Their  dress 
showed  attempts  to  copy  newspaper  interpreta- 
tions of  the  fall  styles,  their  eyes  were  bright 
with  excitement.  When  the  train  carried  them 


28       The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

out  of  the  crowded  station  back  toward  the  little 
dead  town,  it  seemed  no  less  a  tragedy  than  their 
coming.  But  I  could  console  myself  by  the  fact 
that  a  little  of  the  glamour  of  the  city  had 
gone.  A  generous-hearted  woman  had  taken  them 
through  the  Fenway,  had  shown  them  a  little  of 
the  Library  and  the  Public  Gardens,  and  then 
driven  them  through  the  narrow  streets  and 
dirty  crowded  tenements  of  a  section  of  the  city 
which  had  never  entered  their  dreams.  It  was  a 
morning  when  the  east  wind  and  the  mist  did  not 
add  to  the  picture.  Once  or  twice  the  machine 
stopped  where  unskilled,  poor  and  untrained  girls 
had  to  toil.  They  saw  where  girls  like  themselves, 
with  less  than  ten  dollars  between  them,  might 
have  to  live  while  seeking  work.  They  saw  the 
dirty  children  and  hopeless-looking  mothers,  and 
as  one  of  them  wrote  afterward,  "It  made  the 
woods,  red  and  yellow,  and  the  river  and  all,  look 
pretty  good  to  us." 

But  though  they  had  seen  the  facts  of  the  city 
and  something  of  the  glory  had  gone,  yet  the 
facts  of  their  country  home  with  its  old  people 
content,  its  middle-aged  restless  but  unresisting, 
its  dearth  of  life  and  pleasure,  the  inborn  right 
of  youth,  remained. 

As   in   imagination   I   followed   them   on   their 


The  Rural  Girl  29 

journey  from  town  to  town,  farther  and  farther 
from  the  joys  of  companionship,  the  food  for 
dreams,  the  pleasures  to  be  anticipated  while 
one  toils,  I  felt  a  sinking  of  heart  at  the  moment 
when  the  train  was  due  at  the  little  station  four 
miles  from  the  straggling  street  with  its  dilapi- 
dated, pastorless  church,  its  corner  store,  its 
weather-beaten  two-room  town  school.  I  found 
myself  following  one  of  them  two  miles  farther 
up  into  the  hills  to  a  lonely  farm  run  on  the 
plan  of  twenty  years  and  more  ago.  I  sat  down 
for  a  few  moments  with  the  other  at  a  kitchen 
table  which  bore  the  marks  of  poverty,  with  a 
man  who  ate  rapidly  and  in  silence,  a  nervous 
woman  with  one  arm  helpless  from  rheumatism, 
an  older  sister  about  twenty  on  whom  fell  a  large 
share  of  the  housework  and  the  care  of  the  three 
younger  children.  I  confess  the  returning  prod- 
igals seemed  to  me  more  sinned  against  than 
sinning. 

How  to  help  wisely  the  rural  communities, 
sometimes  desperately  poor,  sometimes  with 
means  enough  but  with  no  sense  of  their  re- 
sponsibility to  the  nation  for  the  youth  in  their 
midst,  often  with  vision  but  no  leadership,  some- 
times suffering  with  inertia  from  which  they 
cannot  rise,  and  again  making  great  strides  into 


80       The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

the  light  but  needing  guidance,  is  a  problem  that 
ought  to  challenge  the  American  woman  of  today 
as  she  thinks  of  her  share  in  the  making  of  the 
American  woman  of  tomorrow. 

In  the  light  of  humanity's  heartrending  cry  for 
food  to  which  the  American  women  of  the  present 
day  have  listened,  there  is  no  need  even  for  com- 
ment upon  the  value  of  the  rural  contribution  to 
the  very  life  of  the  world.  But  those  who  think 
are  forced  to  see  the  need  of  stressing  every  effort 
for  making  the  life  of  the  rural  town  and  com- 
munity interesting,  stimulating,  enjoyable,  that 
the  working  power  of  the  human  element  may  be 
one  hundred  per  cent  efficient.  The  last  ten 
years  have  witnessed  a  new  centering  of  interest 
in  the  country  and  the  farm,  and  organizations 
rich  in  executive  ability  and  far-sightedness  are 
attempting  to  meet  the  various  problems.  The 
revival  of  the  Chautauqua  movement  has  made  a 
large  contribution  to  the  broadening  of  horizons ; 
the  magazines  and  journals  have  offered  every 
assistance  to  the  reading  rural  population;  the 
government  at  Washington  has  awakened  to  the 
nation's  need  of  its  agricultural  population  and 
seeks  to  make  close  connection  with  it;  the  great 
part  that  the  school  must  play  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  future  rural  citizenship  is  forcing 


The  Rural  Girl  31 

leading  educational  agencies  to  devote  to  the 
problem  of  ways  and  means  its  serious  attention ; 
the  deplorable  condition  of  church  life,  once  the 
source  of  strength  and  inspiration  to  the  farm- 
ing people,  has  finally  brought  to  the  various 
denominations  such  a  challenge  that  they  are 
calling  men  from  among  their  best  and  strongest 
leaders  to  give  themselves  to  a  determined  effort 
to  solve  the  problem,  and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and 
Y.  W.  C.  A.,  with  their  usual  practical  answer 
to  evident  needs,  are  using  the  power  and  adapt- 
ability of  their  organizations  to  demonstrate 
what  can  be  done  to  relieve  the  deadly  monotony. 
Here  and  there  one  finds,  in  studying  the  sit- 
uation as  it  directly  affects  the  American  girl, 
outstanding  examples  of  what  may  be  done. 
Sometimes  the  agency  which  has  accomplished 
the  transformation  is  the  Extension  Department 
of  a  State  University.  I  had  the  opportunity  of 
meeting  a  group  of  girls  whose  entire  lives  had 
been  changed  through  the  work  of  a  university 
extension  department  which  had  opened  the  door 
into  a  narrow,  dull  country  community  through 
the  Canning  Clubs.  While  they  were  canning, 
these  girls  heard  such  fascinating  reports  of 
university  life  that  two  younger  girls  who  had 
"finished  school"  went  back  into  the  little  ene- 


32      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

room  schoolhouse  to  fit  themselves  for  entrance 
the  next  fall  into  a  high  school  twenty  miles  dis- 
tant. They  were  successful  and  are  on  their  way 
to  the  university.  One  of  them  has  visited  it  and 
her  enthusiasm  is  unbounded.  Two  older  girls 
of  the  group  have  become  readers  of  good  litera- 
ture, well  informed  on  current  topics.  They 
have  started  a  reading  circle  that  has  very  real 
social  value.  Under  the  influence  of  the  girls' 
interest  and  enthusiasm,  the  university  was  able 
to  start  a  mothers'  club,  and  once  a  month  lec- 
turers are  sent  out  to  talk  on  live  subjects  of 
interest  to  mothers.  Such  practical  things  as 
"How  a  Country  Woman  Should  Dress  Her 
Children,"  "Twelve  Good  Meals,"  etc.,  have 
served  to  make  desirable  changes  in  many  homes. 
The  canning,  millinery  and  home-dressmaking 
exhibits  given  by  the  girls  brought  the  whole 
countryside  together,  and  the  girl  who  won  the 
prize  for  bread-making  was  a  heroine.  In  three 
short  years  the  girls  and  women  of  this  commu- 
nity have  been  given  something  to  think  about, 
to  talk  about,  and  on  which  to  get  together. 
New  ambitions  in  raising  flowers,  improving  the 
grounds  about  the  house,  making  the  interior  of 
the  home  more  comfortable  and  habitable  have 
been  born.  One  of  the  lecturers  of  the  university, 


The  Rural  Girl  33 

responsible  for  much  of  the  regeneration  of  this 
community,  said  with  a  beaming  face,  "Two 
porches  and  one  real,  modern,  up-to-date  veran- 
dah have  been  built  during  the  year.  The  owners 
have  proudly  sat  upon  them,  and  under  our  en- 
couragement a  sixteen-year-old  had  a  'perfectly 
wonderful  porch  party'  last  summer." 

Next  year  will  witness  the  organization  of  a 
town  chorus  and  a  Girls'  Social  Club,  both 
modeled  after  successful  organizations  in  the 
southern  part  of  the  county  whose  fame  has 
reached  this  small  village,  so  rapidly  waking  up. 

Another  interesting  group  of  girls  thrilled  me 
one  day  by  their  recitation  of  "A  Country  Girl's 
Creed."  The  last  two  paragraphs  of  the  creed, 
given  with  the  special  earnestness  and  conviction 
of  fresh  young  voices,  could  not  fail  to  impress 
any  listener. 

"I  believe  there  is  much  I  can  do  in  my  country 
home.  Through  studying  the  best  way  to  do  my 
every-day  work  I  can  find  joy  in  common  tasks 
well  done.  Through  loving  comradeship  I  can 
help  bring  into  my  home  the  happiness  and  peace 
that  are  always  so  near  in  God's  out-of-door 
world.  Through  such  a  home  I  can  help  make 
real  to  all  who  pass  that  way  their  brightest  ideal 
of  country  life. 


34      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

"7  believe  my  love  and  loyalty  for  my  country 
home  should  reach  out  in  service  to  that  larger 
home  that  we  call  our  neighborhood.  I  would 
join  with  the  people  who  live  there  in  true  friend- 
liness. I  would  whole-heartedly  give  my  best  to 
further  all  that  is  being  done  for  a  better  com- 
munity. I  would  have  all  that  I  think  and  say 
and  do  help  to  unite  country  people  near  and  far 
in  that  great  kingdom  of  love  for  neighbors  which 
the  Master  came  to  establish — the  Master  who 
knew  and  cared  for  country  ways  and  country 
folks." 

After  the  recitation  of  the  creed  I  heard,  amid 
much  giggling  and  with  the  self-consciousness 
these  girls  had  not  yet  overcome,  the  reading  of 
paragraphs  they  had  written  on  "The  Way  I 
Used  to  Wash  the  Dishes."  The  contrast  be- 
tween these  ways  that  "used  to  be"  and  their  pres- 
ent scientific  dish-washing  was  a  revelation.  The 
same  was  true  of  bed-making  and  the  repairing  of 
their  personal  wardrobes.  I  found  myself  sud- 
denly conscious  of  the  fact  that  I  was  witnessing 
the  "dignifying  of  labor,"  that  these  girls  who 
had  "hated  housework"  and  performed  their 
tasks  in  a  careless  and  unwilling  fashion  had 
suddenly  been  made  to  feel  the  charm  of  efficiency 
and  made  to  experience  the  satisfaction  that 


The  Rural  Girl  85 

comes  in  the  doing  well  of  a  worth-while  task. 
They  were  no  longer  "slaves  of  the  kitchen." 
Something  of  the  fascination  of  the  visions  of 
working  in  a  city  "store"  or  factory  had  passed. 
The  next  course  was  to  be  "Home  Nursing,"  and 
I  confess  that  I  wanted  to  remain  and  see  them 
attack  it.  This  work  was  all  under  the  direction 
of  a  wide-awake,  lovable,  capable  young  woman, 
a  true  girl  herself  in  spirit  and  sympathy,  known 
as  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  County  Secretary.  If  her 
number  could  be  multiplied  over  all  the  rural 
sections  of  our  country,  the  loneliness  and  dull 
grind,  the  drab  existence  and  strain  of  the  teens 
would  soon  pass. 

In  another  country  community  which  had  a 
manufacturing  establishment  employing  foreign 
girls  and  women  whose  lives  had  been  practically 
without  recreation  or  uplift  of  any  sort,  I  found 
a  group  of  four  country  girls,  two  of  whom  had 
"been  away  to  school"  and  all  of  whom  had  some 
leisure,  meeting  with  another  girl  just  graduated 
from  college  to  take  the  course  in  leadership  for 
"Eight-Week  Clubs  for  Immigrant  Girls" 
founded  by  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  The  club,  known 
as  "The  International  Friendship  Club,"  has  as 
its  motto  "Each  Day,  My  Best,"  its  watchword 
"Others,"  and  its  purpose  (1)  To  unite  young 


36      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

women  of  America  and  of  foreign  countries 
in  America  in  an  understanding  friendship.  (2) 
To  learn  to  use  the  language  of  America.  (3)  To 
learn  some  of  the  things  which  make  a  more 
useful,  happy  and  abundant  life.  (4)  To  learn 
about  the  goodness  in  things  ...  all  that  we 
mean  by  that  word  "service."  Later  I  found 
that  the  two  clubs  formed  were  a  very  great 
success;  that  while  furnishing  "good  times"  they 
had  been  able  to  teach  these  girls  much  of  the 
meaning  of  American  customs,  which  had  a  de- 
cided influence  upon  their  homes,  and  that  the 
girls'  gain  in  ability  to  express  themselves  in 
English  was  amazing.  The  benefits  of  this  club 
were  not  confined  to  the  foreign  girls,  for  the 
leaders  and  their  friends  were  able  to  witness  at 
first-hand  something  of  the  self-denial  and  hero- 
ism of  these  sisters  of  toil.  In  one  department 
of  the  factory  improvements  were  brought  about 
through  the  interest  of  the  manager's  young 
daughter,  who  had  never  before  given  a  thought 
to  the  girls  under  her  father's  care. 

After  seeing  the  results  of  their  work  I  am 
convinced  that  all  women  everywhere  who  are 
eager  to  have  a  part  in  the  enrichment  and  de- 
velopment of  rural  girlhood  can  render  no  more 
efficient  service  than  in  helping  to  place  the 


The  Rural  Girl  87 

Young   Women's    Christian   Association   County 
Secretaries  in  the  field. 

The  number  of  public  schools  ministering 
intelligently  to  the  life  of  the  country  girl  is 
increasing.  The  teacher  in  the  average  country 
school  finds  herself  greatly  handicapped  even  if 
she  be  a  young  woman  of  vision  with  definite 
desires  to  contribute  to  the  welfare  of  the  commu- 
nity. The  country  school  is  looked  upon  as  the 
beginning,  it  is  a  stepping-stone.  The  average 
country  community  is  unwilling  or  unable  to  pay 
for  the  very  best  teachers,  living  conditions  are 
exceedingly  hard,  congenial  companionship  often 
not  easy  to  find.  In  the  opinion  of  many,  the 
state  owes  to  the  youth  of  poor,  small  and  scat- 
tered rural  communities  the  very  best  guidance 
and  leadership  possible,  and  should  find  a  way 
to  provide  for  these  future  citizens  teachers  well 
equipped  in  purpose  and  rich  in  preparation  for 
the  high  task  of  molding  a  generation.  When 
public  sentiment  demands  a  thing,  it  will  come, 
and  if  those  interested  in  the  welfare  of  the  coun- 
try girl  can  educate  public  sentiment  up  to  the 
point  where  it  will  be  willing  to  consolidate 
schools,  build  suitable  school  houses,  provide 
possible  quarters  for  the  teachers'  home,  or  auto- 
mobile or  other  transportation  to  such  quarters, 


88      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

the  problem  will  be  well  on  the  way  to  solution. 
In  many  of  our  western  and  some  of  our  southern 
states  such  public  sentiment  has  been  created. 
It  is  with  joy  and  hope  that  one  witnesses  what 
has  been  done  in  such  communities.  The  artistic 
and  suitable  buildings,  with  safe  and  wholesome 
sanitary  conditions  and  facilities  for  lunch,  the 
beautified  school  grounds  with  model  school 
gardens,  the  well  equipped  playground  which  the 
community  shares,  the  teachers'  home  to  which 
the  teachers  of  the  various  districts  return,  and 
in  which  they  can  live  a  normal  home  life 
which  is  both  example  and  incentive  to  the 
community,  have  already  demonstrated  that,  the 
people  informed  and  willing,  the  dream  may  be- 
come a  fact.  When  one  contrasts  such  a  rural 
school  with  the  old,  dirty,  unsanitary  and  un- 
wholesome one-room  building,  set  in  a  bleak,  un- 
attractive "yard,"  furnished  with  old  desks, 
impossible  blackboards,  and  windows  through 
which  little  light  comes,  presided  over  by  a 
poorly  equipped  teacher  who  through  loneliness, 
unsuitable  "boarding-place"  and  insufficient 
salary  has  lost  both  enthusiasm  and  ambition, 
it  seems  decidedly  unfair  that  America  should 
give  to  one  group  of  its  future  mothers,  home- 


The  Rural  Girl  89 

makers  and  citizens  so  much,  and  to  others  so 
little. 

What  has  been  said  of  the  school  in  the  rural 
community  is  largely  true  of  the  church — the 
great  need  is  an  enlightened  and  educated  public 
sentiment  that  will  encourage  and  finally  demand 
those  things  which  shall  give  every  possible 
advantage  to  its  girls.  Often  this  education 
must  come  from  the  outside.  Today  there  is 
great  need  that  church  bodies  realize  the  condi- 
tion of  the  country  church  and  that  they  adopt 
a  definite  policy  against  over-churching,  against 
all  jealousy,  denominational  selfishness  and 
aggressive  propaganda  by  extension  boards.  If 
this  could  be  accomplished,  then  by  conference 
and  agreement  a  community  church  could  serve 
a  community. 

I  am  thinking  of  such  a  church,  standing  now 
in  a  community  where  for  years  the  only  preach- 
ing was  for  a  few  weeks  in  summer,  and  the  only 
touch  of  any  minister  upon  the  community  life 
came  through  a  wedding  or  a  funeral  service. 
Three  evangelical  denominations  owned  unused 
churches  in  that  community.  Youth  left  the 
town  at  the  first  possible  moment,  and  to  the 
girls  who  were  too  young  or  who  found  it 
impossible  to  leave,  life  was  a  dreary  thing. 


40       The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

When  a  young  preacher  was  finally  sent  to  one 
of  the  churches  with  his  meager  salary  paid  by  a 
home  missionary  society,  he  faced  a  problem  as 
great  as  one  might  find  on  a  foreign  field.  In- 
difference, inertia,  prejudice  and  suspicion  are 
hard  to  overcome.  The  long  road  to  victory 
cannot  be  given  in  detail,  but  the  entering  wedge 
was  made  by  the  minister's  wife,  a  young,  ener- 
getic, practical  idealist  who  won  the  girls  of 
the  community.  The  cooperation  of  a  school 
teacher,  the  organization  of  a  community  chorus, 
a  practical  lecture  course  with  demonstrations 
for  the  farmers,  a  Community  House  built  by 
actual  labor  contributed  by  practically  every 
able-bodied  person  in  the  community,  and  finally 
a  new  Union  Church  and  a  cooperative  motion 
picture  house,  have  brought  the  town  from  death 
to  life. 

The  faces  of  the  girls  one  meets  in  the  present 
girls'  club  and  the  Sunday  school  in  that  town 
are  a  wonderful  testimony  to  the  power  of  en- 
vironment. These  girls  are  not  longing  for 
excitement,  they  are  not  blas6,  they  are  not  dull, 
nor  phlegmatic,  they  are  normal,  busy  and 
happy.  They  enjoy  to  the  full  the  simple,  natu- 
ral pleasures  of  an  awakened  community  into 
which  we  earnestly  pray  may  never  enter  supcrfi- 


The  Rural  Girl  41 

cialitj  or  "society"  copied  from  cities,  to  act  as 
a  death  blow  to  their  hard-won  community- 
democracy. 

In  studying  the  transformation  of  this  rural 
village  through  the  church,  one  finds  certain  sig- 
nificant things.  The  pastor  was  a  big  man.  His 
own  horizons  were  far-stretching.  He  came  to 
the  community  with  one  purpose — to  minister. 
He  was  not  dependent  wholly  upon  the  salary 
given  by  the  Home  Missionary  Society,  or  that 
paid  later  by  the  small  group  in  the  community 
able  to  pay  it.  He  was  aided  by  two  men  in  a 
rich  city  church  who  believed  that  the  best  thing 
they  could  give  to  this  rural  community  in  which 
they  had  become  interested  was  leadership.  Their 
contributions  furnished  the  young  pastor  with 
books  and  magazines,  they  brought  him  to  the 
city  to  hear  great  men,  they  gave  him  a  mid- 
winter vacation  with  lectures  at  the  university 
and  opportunity  to  hear  great  preachers,  they 
made  the  parsonage  habitable  and  they  consid- 
ered this  not  a  gift  but  an  investment  on 
which  their  return  has  been  greater  than  they 
dreamed. 

How  long  it  will  be  before  churches  large  in 
numbers  and  rich  in  money  will  see  their  duty  to 
the  struggling  country  church,  and  for  the  sake  of 


42      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

future  Americans  formulate  definite  plans  for  co- 
operation, one  dare  not  say,  but  until  some  such 
policy  is  reached  and  set  at  work  we  cannot  hope 
for  widespread  leadership  on  the  part  of  the  coun- 
try church  in  the  task  of  making  rural  girlhood 
strong,  happy,  efficient  and  good.  The  man  who 
can  successfully  cope  with  the  problems  of  the 
rural  church  must  have  and  be  all  that  the  city 
preacher  has  and  is — plus.  And  he  must  be  able 
to  remain  long  enough  to  leave  his  impress. 

It  may  seem  at  first  as  if  a  plea  that  public 
school,  university,  church  welfare  organizations, 
editors  of  magazines  and  writers  of  books,  indi- 
viduals everywhere  unite  in  serving  the  girl  of 
the  rural  community,  magnifies  her  importance, 
but  it  does  not.  The  substantial  American 
home  is  the  foundation  of  all  our  nation's  hope 
for  the  new  democracy.  The  home  of  high 
standards  and  ideals  set  in  the  midst  of  an  in- 
telligent and  prosperous  rural  community  is  her 
greatest  asset.  The  rural  girl  is  the  maker  of 
that  home.  No  investment  which  can  contribute 
to  her  physical,  mental  and  social  welfare,  which 
can  save  her  from  the  dwarfing  of  spirit  that 
loneliness,  drudgery,  and  little  opportunity  for 
pleasure  and  recreation  always  mean,  can  be  too 


The  Rural  Girl  48 

costly.  The  next  generation  will  need,  more 
than  any  other  for  centuries  has  needed,  strong, 
earnest,  Christian  womanhood.  On  a  thousand 
hills,  hidden  in  countless  valleys,  on  the  edges  of 
great  forests,  and  on  wide  prairies,  that  woman- 
hood is  now  being  marred  or  made — it  is  for  the 
thinking  American  man  and  woman  of  today  to 
decide  which. 


IV 
THE  SUBURBAN  GIRL 


THE    SUBURBAN    GIRL 

IF  one  were  to  make  an  exhaustive  study  of 
the  suburban  girl  and  her  needs,  he  would 
be  compelled  to  preface  this  chapter  with  one 
upon  "Suburbs,"  so  greatly  do  they  vary  in  type. 
Certain  characteristics,  however,  are  common  to 
them  all.  Like  the  spokes  of  a  great  wheel  they 
stretch  out  from  five  to  twenty-five  miles  about 
the  city.  The  little  station  of  wood,  brick  or 
stone,  with  or  without  grassplots  and  flowers 
according  to  its  age,  the  type  of  its  citizens  or 
the  dividends  of  the  railroad,  the  small  stores, 
shops  and  offices  that  serve  that  part  of  the 
community  which  does  not  make  its  purchases 
and  transact  its  business  "in  town,"  are  so 
familiar  as  to  need  no  word  of  comment.  Were 
one  to  spend  a  day  at  any  of  these  stations  he 
would  witness  practically  the  same  procession  of 
human  beings,  rushing  to  or  hurrying  from  the 
city.  In  the  early  hours  of  the  morning,  there 
pours  by  train,  boat  or  trolley  from  the  suburbs 
nearest  the  city  a  stream  of  men — and  news- 
papers. It  is  usually  seven  o'clock  before  any 
considerable  number  of  girls  are  seen  hurrying  to 


48      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

the  station  or  rushing  aboard  trolley  or  boat. 
From  that  time  until  nine  o'clock  the  stream  is 
constant.  After  that  the  rush  from  the  nearer 
suburbs  within  the  five  or  ten-cent  zone  is  over. 
The  later  the  hour,  the  more  prosperous,  in 
the  main,  is  the  appearance  of  the  girls.  The 
majority  now  are  well  groomed.  In  half  an  hour 
or  more  they  will  be  shopping.  From  eleven  to 
twelve  comes  still  another  type,  mostly  in  groups. 
They  mean  lunch,  then  the  matine'e  or  opera. 
From  a  number  of  suburbs,  motors  speed  rapidly 
along  toward  town,  bearing  the  girls  who  prac- 
tically never  board  a  trolley  and  whom  the  subur- 
ban trains  seldom  serve.  From  two  o'clock  until 
five  the  station  is  almost  deserted  and  no  one 
need  stand  on  trolley  or  train.  Then  comes  the 
hurrying  crowd  again,  rushing  aboard,  dropping 
wearily  into  seats,  standing  hanging  to  straps, 
or  leaning  against  the  door  across  which  are 
printed  the  words  "Do  not  lean  against  this 
door."  The  girls  who  went  into  town  on  the 
early  trains  come  out  on  the  late  ones — it  hardly 
seems  fair.  How  often  I  have  wished,  as  I  have 
hurried  along  with  these  girls  who  have  for  a 
day  been  swallowed  up  in  the  roar  of  New  York, 
Chicago,  San  Francisco,  Los  Angeles  or  Boston, 
that  I  might  in  a  series  of  rapidly  moving  pic- 


The  Suburban  Girl  49 

tures  follow  them  through  its  eight  or  more 
hours  and  then  into  the  night.  What  a  strange 
life  it  is  for  a  girl — young — full  of  dreams  and 
eagerness,  hope  and  courage,  as  yet  unharmed 
by  experience.  Some  of  those  who  go  in  early 
and  return  late  show  the  mark  of  the  years. 
They  are  twenty-five — thirty-five.  Will  the 
sixteen-year-old  at  thirty-five  still  be  commuting 
on  the  7.20  and  the  5.18?  She  does  not  think 
so ;  she  intends  sometime  to  go  in  at  ten  or  eleven 
— or  going  by  motor  is  not  impossible  in  her 
dreams ;  that  is  nature's  law  of  compensation  in 
operation. 

As  I  have  come  to  know  these  girls  of  the 
suburbs,  the  moving-picture  scenes  of  their  lives 
have  gradually  taken  color  and  form.  I  know 
that  the  girls  who  motor  in  have  beautiful  homes, 
many  of  them  places  of  true  culture  and  refine- 
ment, that  they  enjoy  every  pleasure  the  city 
offers  during  the  winter  season  and  then  go  to 
the  country,  the  mountains,  the  shore  or  the 
fashionable  camp,  or  spend  the  days  in  travel  or 
at  house  parties.  I  know  that  they  are  sheltered 
and  protected — but  they  are  not  all  happy.  The 
majority  of  them  will  marry  and  make  more 
homes,  many  of  them  even  more  luxurious,  builded 
in  more  fashionable  suburbs  than  those  of  their 


50      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

fathers,  but  they  will  not  all  be  happy,  for  things 
do  not  make  happiness.  I  know  that  these  girls 
have  needs,  deep  spiritual  needs,  hunger  of  soul, 
and  that  sometime,  sooner  or  later,  because  they 
live  in  the  day  of  the  birth  pangs  of  true  democ- 
racy, they  will  want  to  get  into  life  at  its  heart 
and  do  something. 

I  know  that  the  girl  who  eats  a  hurried  break- 
fast in  the  dark  on  a  winter  morning  and  runs 
to  the  train,  who  works  all  day  beside  a  machine 
or  behind  a  counter,  with  only  the  meager  lunch 
her  purse  can  afford,  who  often  helps  with  the 
dishes  and  launders  her  shirtwaist  or  collar  after 
her  return  at  night,  needs  the  strength  of  a  giant 
to  stand  the  strain,  and  she  hasn't  it.  She  can- 
not have  sufficient  sleep  and  pleasure,  and  now 
while  she  is  young  she  chooses  the  pleasure. 
From  a  group  of  ten  girls  of  the  early  morning 
commuters,  I  learned  one  night  in  the  moonlight, 
at  a  conference  where  we  were  confessing  our 
sins  of  physical  carelessness,  one  to  another,  that 
three  girls  who  were  chums  stayed  in  town,  one 
night  a  week,  going  without  dinner  to  go  to  a 
"show."  "There  is  never  anything  going  on  in 
our  poor  little  town,"  one  said.  "At  least  noth- 
ing for  us  girls."  Another  belonged  to  a  group 
that  went  to  each  other's  homes  one  night  a  week. 


The  Suburban  Girl  51 

"I  can't  eat  and  get  my  dress  changed  and  get 
there  before  eight  to  save  my  life,  and  then  we 
get  to  talking  and  I  stay  later  than  I  mean  to," 
said  one  of  them.  "Many  a  time  I  have  run  all 
the  way  home  from  Dot's,  scared  to  death — it's  a 
lonely  way.  I'm  almost  dead  the  next  day.  But 
what  can  you  do,  you  can't  stay  in  the  house  all 
the  time!"  And  from  another  I  learned,  "Gee,  I 
know  I  commit  plenty  of  physical  sins ;  I  suppose 
I'll  pay  for  them.  Not  keeping  my  windows  open, 
for  instance!  I  just  can't  do  it.  I  nearly  die  as 
it  is,  dressing  in  the  morning.  Dad  can't  get  up 
at  midnight  to  have  the  house  warm  in  the  morn- 
ings. Besides,  we  can't  pay  for  the  coal.  I  help 
all  I  can,  but  everything  is  so  high.  I  kept  them 
open  up  to  Thanksgiving  last  year,  and  then, 
believe  me,  I  shut  all  but  one  and  that  about  an 
inch  open.  Tuberculosis  hasn't  got  me  yet,"  she 
added  with  a  laugh,  "but  I  do  have  awful  colds." 
A  third  girl  confessed  that  she  did  "worse  than 
that  last  winter.  I  have  a  ten-minute  walk  to 
the  station  and  fifteen  more  in  town.  I  work  in 

the  basement  of  .     Well,  if  you'll  believe 

it,  I  wore  out  two  pairs  of  rubbers  before  the 
winter  was  half  over.  I  didn't  buy  any  more. 
Didn't  have  the  sixty-nine  cents.  If  somebody 
would  tell  me  how  to  stretch  out  my  money  after 


52      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

I  pay  mother  my  board  and  get  my  ticket  and 
my  lunches  and  clothes  enough  so  they  won't  dis- 
charge me,  I  won't  commit  any  more  'physical 
sins.' " 

Under  the  circumstances  I  knew  no  recipe  for 
"stretching  money,"  but  I  longed  for  one.  The 
girls  in  this  group  were  intelligent,  with  respect- 
able, hard-working  parents.  They  had  been 
obliged  to  leave  school  early  to  help  eke  out  the 
family  income.  Some  day  they  will  marry,  and 
the  "physical  sins"  will  demand  recompense  in 
sons  and  daughters  physically  unfit. 

I  know  that  the  girls  who  live  at  home  in  subur- 
ban communities  and  work  in  business  houses 
where  they  are  expected  to  be  at  their  desks  at 
nine  o'clock  and  to  leave  them  at  five,  impress 
one  on  the  whole  most  favorably.  They  have  had 
some  degree  at  least  of  preparation  for  their 
work.  They  have  not  entered  upon  a  blind-alley 
occupation.  The  possibility  of  promotion,  and 
increasing  reward  for  faithful  and  efficient 
service,  tends  to  foster  in  them  the  desire  to 
excel.  In  meeting  large  groups  of  girls  in  the 
various  sections  of  our  country,  those  at  work  in 
the  offices  of  reputable  business  houses  and  living 
under  wholesome  conditions  in  the  suburbs,  have 
seemed  to  me  the  sanest,  keenest,  most  ambitious 


The  Suburban  Girl  53 

and  most  promising  of  all  the  girls  outside  of 
the  professions,  who  enter  the  working  world 
to  earn  a  livelihood.  Except  when,  through 
weakness  of  character  or  laxity  in  home  training, 
they  succumb  to  the  peculiar  temptations  of  their 
positions,  the  picture  that  they  present  is  most 
encouraging. 

But  the  suburban  girl,  while  escaping  many 
of  the  evils  of  city  life,  does  not  as  yet  enjoy 
her  inalienable  right  to  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 
There  are  suburban  communities  without  a  ves- 
tige of  community  consciousness,  where  public 
spirit  is  unknown  and  each  group  lives  com- 
placently "unto  itself."  One  such  community, 
awakened  recently  from  its  lethargy  by  cold, 
hard  and  shocking  facts  regarding  the  physical 
and  moral  health  of  the  girls  that  made  up 
its  quota  of  the  great  commercial  and  indus- 
trial army,  confessed  that  it  knew  practically 
nothing  of  its  schools,  the  places  of  amusement 
frequented  by  its  children  or  the  attempts  of  its 
small  number  of  church  people  in  active  service 
to  stem  the  subtle  tide  of  evil  which  was  under- 
mining the  character  of  girlhood  before  it  had 
time  to  form.  When  this  community  knew  the 
facts,  it  acted,  but  it  is  practically  helpless  so 
far  as  the  immediate  generation  of  girls  in  their 


54      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

teens  is  concerned.  It  opened  its  eyes  too  late. 
I  am  quite  convinced  that  numberless  suburban 
communities  know  nothing  of  themselves.  The 
thoughtful,  intelligent  people  are  too  busy,  the 
women  of  social  ambitions  and  dreams  too  self- 
centered  and  blind,  the  mothers  of  the  girls  who 
suffer  too  ignorant,  or  too  burdened  by  the  task 
of  making  existence  possible  for  their  families, 
to  study  situations  and  trace  results  back  to 
their  first  cause.  If  America  is  to  solve  the 
problem  of  making  a  strong  womanhood,  capable 
of  giving  to  state  and  nation  worthy  sons  and 
daughters,  it  must  cultivate,  foster,  train  and 
put  to  the  test  its  boasted  spirit  of  an  equal  op- 
portunity for  all  men.  It  cannot  act  with  intelli- 
gence until  it  is  informed,  and  one  undeniable 
duty  in  this  present  hour  of  crisis  is  that  of 
knowing  the  conditions  under  which  the  childhood 
of  a  given  community  enters  upon  life,  the  possi- 
bilities for  its  nourishment,  the  sort  of  training 
given  it  in  the  elementary,  high  and  evening 
schools,  the  pictures  exhibited  in  motion-picture 
bouses  and  the  associations  that,  centering  in 
them,  play  so  large  a  part  in  the  making  of 
character.  Fact  is  a  powerful  thing.  Not  merely 
fact  that  "everybody  knows"  but  fact  that  can 
be  proven  and  demonstrated — fact  that  dares  to 


The  Suburban  Girl  55 

face  Gold  and  say  to  it,  "You  are  weighed  In  the 
balance  and  found  wanting — this  community 
cannot  afford  to  acquire  you  at  such  a  price." 

In  a  day  when  conservation  and  efficiency  are 
words  that  fall  easily  from  every  lip,  it  seems 
strange  to  find  so  much  waste  of  the  human  ele- 
ment. In  a  suburban  community  in  which  I  have 
become  interested,  which  is  the  type  of  many 
another,  I  find  several  challenging  anomalies.  I 
find  an  expensive,  well-equipped  grammar  school 
whose  teaching  force  is  paid  so  little  that  only 
those  women  and  men  who  reach  their  maximum 
development  early  can  afford  to  stay.  Not  in 
one  instance  is  the  salary  adequate  to  support 
any  live,  energetic,  ambitious,  forward-looking 
man  or  woman.  Consequently  each  September 
brings  a  large  percentage  of  new  teachers  willing 
to  come  to  get  experience.  If  they  are  promising 
or  equal  to  their  tasks,  the  next  autumn  will  find 
their  places  empty,  onlv  those  remaining  who 
can  do  "nothing  better"  or  whose  family  ties 
compel  them  to  sacrifice  the  future  to  the  present. 
Such  a  condition  is  disastrous  to  the  child.  The 
superintendent  realizes  it,  but  he  is  helpless. 
Sometimes  in  desperation  he  demands  that  his 
teachers  sign  a  contract  in  April  before  new  posi- 
tions offer,  that  they  may  be  held  for  the  follow- 


56      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

ing  year,  but  this  by  its  effect  upon  the  teaching 
force  practically  defeats  his  purpose.  In  this 
type  of  community  the  children  who  leave  school 
as  soon  as  the  law  permits  go  blindly  out  into 
the  world  of  work  to  waste  days,  years  and  often 
life  in  the  effort  to  find  suitable  and  congenial 
toil — to  join  the  pitiful  and  lamentable  number 
of  misfits.  Neither  they  nor  their  parents  know 
what  occupations  are  open  to  girls  with  limited 
education,  what  opportunities  for  progress  or 
promotion  exist,  what  moral  or  physical  dangers 
there  are  or  what  the  special  desires  and  charac- 
teristics of  the  child  may  enable  her  best  to  do. 
After  the  girl  "goes  to  work,"  no  intelligent  eye 
follows,  no  informed,  sympathetic  heart  directs. 
She  has  gone  to  work.  That  is  the  end. 

The  community  does  not  see  its  folly,  its  in- 
efficiency, its  lack  of  true  patriotism.  But  we 
see  now  and  then  the  contrasting  picture  of 
schools  with  a  teaching  force  at  its  best  and  con- 
stantly improving  upon  its  best,  with  a  well- 
informed,  trained  group  of  teachers  of  civics, 
interpreters  of  vocations,  with  a  guide  who  not 
only  opens  the  way  into  congenial  employment 
but  follows  with  stimulus  and  encouragement 
until  the  danger  of  square  peg  and  round  hole 
is  past.  Although  still  in  the  experimental  stage, 


Tht  Suburban  Girl  61 

the  accomplishment  of  the  vocational  guide  in 
placing  girlhood,  in  firing  ambition,  in  raising 
the  ideals  of  the  young  workers,  has  more  than 
justified  any  expenditure.  The  suburban  com- 
munity, feeding  the  machinery  of  the  city,  is  un- 
worthy of  America,  is  wasteful  and  inefficient,  if 
it  hurls  its  young  girlhood,  unprepared  and 
unprotected,  into  the  jaws  of  the  competitive 
industrial  and  commercial  mill. 

Sometimes  when  one  studies  the  work  of  the 
church  in  suburban  communities  of  certain  types 
it  seems  almost  as  though  he  were  witnessing  a 
determined  effort  on  the  part  of  one  group  to 
put  out  a  fire  which  is  being  constantly  fed  in- 
flammable material  by  another.  The  Sunday 
schools  are  struggling  to  establish  high  ideals  of 
the  relation  of  God  and  man,  and  man  and  his 
fellow  man.  Meanwhile  the  life  of  the  poor  and 
the  display  of  the  rich  are  giving  constant 
demonstration  of  the  fact  that  in  the  commu- 
nity life,  God  is  hidden  in  the  maze,  and  justice 
is  but  a  statue  in  stone.  The  girls'  clubs  of 
various  names,  the  Camp  Fire,  the  Girl  Scouts, 
at  work  in  the  development  of  character  and 
the  habit  of  devotion  to  high  ideals  of  recrea- 
tion and  sport,  are  met  by  the  unwholesome 
dance  and  the  cards  that  have  no  rightful 


58      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

place  in  the  life  of  a  girl  of  sixteen.  At  every 
point  is  waste,  moral,  mental  and  physical  waste, 
because  a  community  small  enough  and  in  the 
main  intelligent  enough  does  not  give  itself  to  the 
task  of  forming  a  plan  and  a  program  which  its 
citizens,  for  the  sake  of  present  and  future 
America,  shall  work  out  together. 

I  recently  spent  some  time  in  a  community 
boasting  a  Recreation  Center.  It  proved  to  be 
all  that  its  name  implied,  and  more.  It  was  a 
center  of  wholesome  community  life.  On  Tuesday 
morning  I  found  a  group  of  women  hard  at  work 
on  Red  Cross  duties;  in  the  late  afternoon,  high- 
school  girls  who  had  gladly  given  two  hours;  in 
the  evening,  the  shop  and  store  girls.  Women  of 
leisure,  in  the  main,  women  of  the  church,  were 
present  to  guide,  direct  and  form  friendships.  I 
witnessed  a  wonderfully  satisfactory  pageant  in 
which  all  the  community  took  part.  I  saw  the 
Saturday  night  dance,  which  the  older  young 
people  and  in  many  cases  their  parents  enjoyed 
to  the  full.  I  learned  very  soon  the  connection 
between  the  Center  and  the  movies,  and  that  they 
were  working  together.  Women  with  training 
and  power  of  leadership  were  at  work  in  its  girls' 
classes  and  clubs,  and  they  began  with  girls  of 
ten  and  twelve.  The  spirit  of  "all  together  for 


The  Suburban  Girl  69 

the  good  of  each"  was  evident.  The  faces  of  the 
young  people  showed  the  effect  of  wholesome 
living;  they  looked  forward  with  hope  to  the 
future  and  greatly  enjoyed  the  present.  No  iron 
hand  of  evil,  of  nauseous  temptation  and  vice 
sapped  life  at  its  roots — there  were  no  saloons. 

All  that  I  saw  in  this  community,  and  the 
special  lines  of  civic  service  and  betterment  I 
have  witnessed  in  other  and  widely  scattered 
suburban  towns,  make  me  confident  that  the 
dawn  of  the  day  of  a  suburban  life,  wholesome 
and  more  worthy  the  idealism  of  the  greatest 
Democracy,  is  near — that  the  importance  of  the 
task  of  conserving  American  womanhood  at  the 
start  is  awakening  those  that  sleep.  The  diffi- 
culties are  challenging,  not  insurmountable;  in- 
deed, from  the  vocabulary  of  womanhood  rich 
in  Christian  idealism,  faith  and  will,  insurmount- 
able and  its  synonyms  disappear,  and  it  becomes 
a  matter  of  test  and  experiment  with  methods 
that  promise  success. 


V 

THE  CITY  GIRL 


THE  CITY  GIRL 

IF,  because  of  the  great  variety  in  type,  one 
finds  the  analysis  of  the  life  of  the  suburban 
girl  difficult,  how  much  more  complicated 
does  he  find  that  of  the  city  girl!  Yet  out  of 
the  mad  whirl  and  seeming  chaos  of  city  life, 
four  definite  groups  of  girls  emerge  as  one 
studies  it — the  industrial  girl,  the  business  girl, 
the  schoolgirl,  the  girl  at  home.  Whether  it  be 
a  great  metropolis  or  a  smaller  manufactur- 
ing or  trade  center,  the  four  groups  are  there, 
varied  in  size  but  having  great  outstanding  char- 
acteristics. The  industrial  girl  in  the  main 
leaves  school  early,  during  the  sixth  to  eighth 
grade,  according  to  her  age.  Often  because  of 
limited  mental  ability  she  has  reached  only  the 
fourth  grade  when  her  age  entitles  her  to  an 
employment  card.  Not  many  girls  in  industrial 
life,  unless  they  are  in  highly  specialized  indus- 
tries, have  had  even  one  year  of  high-school 
training.  Their  work  is  arduous,  exhausting,  or 
characterized  by  a  deadly  monotony;  their  sur- 
roundings unsanitary,  in  many  cases  to  an  un- 
believable degree;  the  machinery  dangerous,  the 


64      Tht  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

opportunities  for  promotion  few.  They  -find  in 
their  work  little  to  interest,  inspire  or  enjoy,  and 
therefore  look  for  these  things  entirely  outside 
their  work,  finding  them,  if  at  all,  in  the  night- 
life of  the  cities.  The  problem  facing  those  who 
would  formulate  fundamental  and  far-reaching 
plans  for  development  and  character-building  in 
these  girls  is  twofold:  conditions  under  which 
they  work  and  live  must  be  made  physically  and 
morally  safe;  there  must  be  some  incentive  for 
progress,  and  there  must  be  provision  for  recrea- 
tional life,  with  the  ultimate  wiping  out  of 
agencies  that,  for  private  gain,  prey  upon  the 
weaknesses  of  girlhood,  in  the  name  of  amusement 
and  pleasure. 

In  these  directions  the  progress  already  made 
encourages  one  to  believe  that  when  sufficient 
interest  can  be  awakened,  and  proper  investiga- 
tion reveals  cold,  hard  facts,  the  American  public 
will  act.  The  duty  of  unceasing  effort  to  educate 
that  public  is  clear.  Two  industrial  plants  which 
I  visited  within  the  year  stand  out  vividly  as 
exponents  of  what  ought  and  what  ought  not 
to  be. 

In  the  first  establishment  there  were  light  and 
air,  two  absolute  necessities,  not  only  for  the 
present  life  of  the  girl  but  for  the  future  life  of 


The  City  Girl  65 

America.  Modern  ingenuity  has  made  light 
possible  even  in  the  crowded  districts,  and  mod- 
ern inventions  have  made  germ-laden,  death- 
dealing  dust  unnecessary.  The  manager  of  this 
establishment  had  seen  to  it  that  the  dangerous 
machinery  was  protected,  the  girls  safeguarded 
and  the  nervous  tension  that  goes  with  constant 
effort  to  avoid  getting  hands  or  hair  caught  was 
absent.  Wherever  possible,  provision  was  made 
for  the  girls  to  be  seated.  The  sanitary  ar- 
rangements were  perfect;  the  rules  of  the  com- 
pany made  it  necessary  for  girls  to  be  neat  and 
clean.  Arrangements  for  a  wholesome  lunch  to 
be  served  at  a  possible  price  and  for  girls  to  eat 
luncheon  provided  by  themselves,  were  adequate 
and  satisfactory.  Through  the  welfare  system 
the  girls  became  individuals,  the  work  was  noted, 
added  wages  or  a  higher  position  was  the  reward 
of  faithfulness  and  skill;  opportunity  for  study 
if  one  wished  to  fit  herself  for  the  highest  depart- 
ments was  offered.  Insurance  and  profit-sharing 
gave  the  added  sense  of  self-respect  without 
which  there  can  be  no  real  progress.  I  found  the 
social  life  of  the  plant  on  a  most  efficient  basis, 
so  that  a  girl,  if  she  chose,  could  find  pleasure 
and  amusement  without  danger.  I  shall  never 
forget,  as  I  was  about  to  leave,  stepping  into  » 


66      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

room  where  a  very  sweet  and  courteous  girl  was 
at  work  coloring  lantern  slides  used  in  connection 
with  the  work  of  the  company.  She  smiled  when 
I  spoke,  but  did  not  answer,  and  I  found  she  was 
totally  deaf,  having  been  made  so  by  a  serious 
illness.  When  she  came  back  she  could  not  do 
her  old  work  at  a  high-power  machine,  and  in- 
stead of  discharging  her  the  company  tried  her 
out  in  other  departments  and  found  that  her 
delicate  touch  and  color-sense  made  her  inval- 
uable. Her  happy  face,  her  ability  to  support 
her  mother  and  herself  in  comfort,  the  excep- 
tionally fine  work  she  was  doing,  were  a  wonderful 
testimony  to  their  system  of  human  economy. 
The  history  of  other  individuals  saved  from  in- 
efficiency or  the  scrap-heap  was  quite  as  inter- 
esting. That  company  was  making  more  money 
than  it  had  ever  dreamed  it  could  in  the  days 
when  it  just  ran  a  factory. 

When  I  left  this  place,  which  I  would  like,  if 
only  I  could,  to  think  of  as  a  typical  American 
industrial  plant,  and,  after  a  short  journey, 
walked  along  the  dark,  narrow  hall  of  entrance 
to  another  factory,  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  had 
been  dropped  back  scores  of  years,  into  the  ways 
of  yesterdays  that  should  have  been  forgotten. 
The  laws  of  this  second  state  were  very  poor 


The  City  Girl  67 

and  their  enforcement  lax.  Girls  undoubtedly 
under  age  were  at  work.  Dust  was  everywhere 
and  the  poor  light  was  a  constant  strain  on  eyes 
and  nerves.  There  was  no  opportunity  for  girls 
to  be  seated,  only  two  devices  for  protection  from 
dangerous  machinery  were  in  use,  the  air  was 
deadly  and  I  could  not  describe  on  this  page  the 
condition  of  the  toilets,  with  walls  disfigured  by 
words  and  drawings  that  made  one  shudder  as 
she  thought  of  the  blunted  moral  sense  of  those 
who  put  them  there  and  the  effect  upon  the 
young  girl  just  entering  the  industrial  world 
from  the  schoolroom.  While  I  was  present  a 
girl  was  discharged  by  an  angry  "boss."  In 
spite  of  my  being  within  hearing  he  dismissed 
her  with  oaths  and  she  answered  him  with  more. 
But  she  cried  outside  in  the  hall  and  said,  "Oh, 
my  Lord,  what  will  I  do  now,  how  will  I  face  my 
mother?"  Her  clothing  was  soiled  and  her  whole 
appearance  ill-kempt.  She  was  a  specimen  of 
girlhood  as  far  removed  from  those  I  had  left 
in  the  first  industrial  plant  as  you  can  well 
imagine.  When  the  "boss"  left  the  room,  some 
of  the  girls  began  to  sing,  others  talked  of  the 
discharged  girl,  one  near  the  aisle  where  I  was 
swore  at  her  loom  in  words  that  I  have  seldom 
heard  men  use.  That  night  we  saw  where  these 


68      Tht  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

girls  lived,  the  only  places  provided  which  they 
could  afford,  and  rent  there  was  very  high.  We 
saw  the  cheap,  garish  vaudeville  houses,  the 
saloons  with  "family  entrances,"  the  cheap 
"movies"  and,  although  it  was  cold,  the  constant 
procession  of  very  young  boys  and  girls  walk- 
ing up  and  down  the  streets.  There  was  a 
Y.  W.  C.  A.  in  the  city,  but  it  had  no  indus- 
trial secretary.  So  far  as  I  could  find  out, 
with  the  exception  of  two  downtown  churches 
which  ministered  through  clubs  to  the  girls  they 
had  managed  to  keep  in  their  Sunday  schools, 
there  were  absolutely  no  direct  uplifting  influ- 
ences in  the  lives  of  those  girls.  Yet  they  are  a 
part  of  American  life,  they  marry,  they  make 
homes  unworthy  the  word,  they  contribute  chil- 
dren,— the  future  Americans.  It  is  not  fair  that 
in  one  spot  of  the  nation  a  wise,  intelligent  com- 
pany of  men  should  produce  conditions  such  as 
I  found  in  the  first  industrial  plant,  and  blind 
tnd  ignorant  men  a  single  night's  journey  away 
ihould  tolerate  and  preserve  conditions  such  as 
I  saw  in  the  second  factory.  It  is  not  only  un- 
christian, it  is  un-American.  Law  should  compel 
men  to  do  what  low  ideals  will  never  impel  them 
to  do.  The  chief  owner  of  the  second  factory  is 
AB  absentee.  She  has  never  seen  it,  she  knows 


The  City  Girl  69 

nothing  of  its  methods.  I  believe  she  would  be 
heart-sick  over  the  conditions  if  she  lived  a  week 
in  the  midst  of  them.  But  her  lack  of  knowledge 
cannot  repair  the  damage  done  to  the  bodies  and 
souls  of  that  city's  girls. 

I  believe  the  great  agency  for  reform  to  be 
public  sentiment,  and  public  sentiment  is  created 
through  education.  Fact  has  a  tremendous 
power  in  American  life  when  it  is  presented 
clearly  to  all  the  people.  The  printed  page, 
the  public  school,  the  home  and  the  church 
are  the  great  educating  forces  of  the  community. 
For  the  last  ten  years  the  printed  page  has 
faithfully  set  forth  facts  regarding  the  dangers, 
physical  and  moral,  to  the  girl  workers  of 
America.  It  has  written  up,  in  long  illustrated 
articles,  stories  of  the  success  of  men  who  have 
used  humanitarian  principles  in  business.  It  has 
greatly  helped  to  awaken  people  who  have  been 
indifferent  to  the  vast  power  of  the  human  ele- 
ment. The  religious  press  has  also  opened  its 
columns  to  appeals  for  the  need  of  raising  the 
standards  of  industrial  girl-life.  Here  and  there 
private  schools  have  been  true  to  their  great 
opportunity  and  studies  in  civics  have  opened  a 
door  to  the  truths  that  every  privileged  girl  who 
is  a  sharer  in  the  profits  of  industrial  life  has  a 


70      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

right  to  know.  Many  high  schools,  through 
vocational  studies  and  community  civics,  have 
opened  the  eyes  of  their  pupils  and  laid  the 
foundations  for  a  new  and  powerful  public  senti- 
ment in  the  next  generation. 

The  homes  of  intelligence,  where  leaders  in 
thought  and  action  should  be  trained  and  nour- 
ished, it  seems  to  me  have  been  remiss.  The  dis- 
cussions around  the  table  in  the  presence  of  the 
older  children,  the  few  words  of  comment  by 
father  or  mother  on  the  industrial  conditions  of 
the  day,  the  recognition  of  the  value  and  need 
of  humanitarian  instead  of  commercialized  gov- 
ernment, the  review  of  popular  lectures,  new 
books,  etc.,  make  a  deep  and  lasting  impression 
upon  the  minds  of  American  youth.  So  often 
this  tremendous  force  in  the  making  of  leaders 
is  utterly  neglected  by  the  homes  of  refinement, 
culture  and  intelligence  where  leaders  should  be 
made.  Our  sheltered  girls,  the  recipients  of  the 
results  of  the  toil  of  their  sisters,  are  too  often 
left  uninformed  and  unawakened,  where  wise 
parents  might  guide  them  into  sane  knowledge. 
In  the  homes  of  "the  good  old  American  stock" 
the  questions  of  the  day  are  left  too  often  un- 
touched, while  the  petty  things  of  family  life  or 
experience  are  discussed  without  benefit  to  any 


The  City  Ctrl  71 

one.  The  home  conversation  is  a  vital  force  in 
the  making  of  public  sentiment,  and  homes  must 
be  entreated  to  begin  to  talk  once  more  as  they 
did  in  Lincoln's  log  cabin,  around  Whittier's 
fireplace,  under  the  trees  in  Louisa  M.  Alcott's 
orchard,  leaning  on  the  pasture  bars  on  Daniel 
Webster's  farm,  of  the  great  issues  in  which, 
before  they  are  aware,  their  sons  and  daughters 
will  play  a  mighty  part. 

The  church  also  makes  public  sentiment.  In 
every  community  it  has  within  the  hearing  of  its 
voice  the  leaders  of  that  community  and  their 
sons  and  daughters.  It  has  its  school  in  which 
it  teaches  religion  which,  if  it  is  of  the  right  sort, 
has  a  mighty  part  to  play  in  molding  sentiment. 
Many  of  the  teachers  of  its  older  boys  and 
girls,  as  well  as  those  of  the  early  teen  years, 
have  forgotten  to  vitalize  the  truths  of  the  Book 
that  has  come  down  to  us  from  other  days  with 
the  facts  of  our  day  and  the  answer  of  the  princi- 
ples of  Jesus  Christ  to  those  facts.  Many  have 
made  the  mistake  of  giving  to  these  older  boys 
and  girls  a  religion  of  childhood  that  shuns  ques- 
tions, shakes  its  head  over  problems,  demands 
little  of  deep  sacrifice  in  the  face  of  need,  is  sat- 
isfied with  a  God  that  stays  far  away  in  the 
heavens  until  man  sends  up  a  great  cry  to  him 


72      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

to  help  in  an  hour  of  need.  But  those  who  art 
near  to  the  teaching  work  of  the  church  can  stt 
the  great  new  light  that  is  permeating  itt  work, 
both  impressing  the  truth  and  providing  for  the 
expression  of  it,  and  the  next  ten  years  will  see 
great  strides  made  by  the  teaching  church  in 
making  the  God  that  it  represents  so  real  that  he 
will  be  the  great  force  in  the  building  up  of  a 
tane,  strong,  unselfish  public  sentiment. 

The  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  industrial 
girl  seems  to  me  to  lie  in  an  educated,  humanized, 
intelligent  public  sentiment.  To  create  it  takes 
time  and  patience,  but  when  it  comes  it  is  irre- 
sistible. American  men  and  women  are  seeking 
the  truth,  daring  to  look  at  fact,  and  we  may 
hope  that  the  dawn  of  the  day  of  justice  and 
consideration  for  toiling  girlhood  is  not  far 
distant. 


VI 

THE  BUSINESS  GIRL 


THE   BUSINESS   GIRL 

NO  one  can  stand  at  the  five  o'clock  hour 
near  the  elevators  of  any  great  metro- 
politan office  building  and  not  be  stirred 
by  the  deep  appeal  of  girlhood  and  young 
womanhood  as  it  pours  out  from  its  work  over 
typewriter,  multigraph,  filing-case,  ledger  and 
desk.  Much  of  it  is  so  young,  so  poorly  paid 
for  these  days  of  the  ever-increasing  cost  of 
living,  that  the  strain  of  making  ends  meet  shows 
in  face,  voice  and  conversation.  The  majority 
of  these  girls  have  had  high-school  or  special 
business-school  training.  Only  the  few  who  have 
the  more  responsible  positions  have  had  greater 
advantages,  but  experience  has  taught  them 
much.  They  are  in  the  main  keen,  alert,  efficient, 
able  to  think  and  act  quickly.  One  who  is  con- 
tinually meeting  groups  of  girls  learns  very  soon 
that  the  business  girl  can  be  both  her  keenest 
critic  and  her  most  devoted  friend.  The  business 
girl  deals  with  facts,  often  cold,  hard  and  un- 
pleasant, and  she  asks  of  those  who  want  to 
show  her  friendship  that  they  also  deal  with 
facts.  She  has  emotions,  but  she  is  accustomed 


76       Tht  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

to  keep  them  under  the  management  of  her  will, 
and  if  a  strong  appeal  is  to  be  made  to  her,  it 
must,  whili  beginning  with  th«  emotions,  be  lub- 
mitted  to  reason  and  will.  A  well-meaning  friend 
who  thinks  she  knows  girls  was  inviting  a  girl 
of  twenty-two  to  attend  a  Bible  class  the  other 
day.  The  girl  has  a  good  salary  and  an  impor- 
tant position.  When  the  woman  had  left  her 
after  a  half  promise  that  she  would  come,  the 
girl  turned  to  me  and  said,  "Her  method  of 
winning  me  was  very  interesting,  wasn't  it?  It 
was  good  business  psychology — except  that  she 
didn't  size  me  up  right.  If  I  join  the  Bible  class 
it  will  not  be  for  any  of  the  reasons  that  she 
gave.  It  will  be  because  I'm  not  as  good  as  I 
ought  to  be  and  I  know  it  and,  to  be  perfectly 
frank,  I  need  help.  I  wish  she  had  been  honest 
and  said  that  the  class  was  to  help  us  lire  better 
instead  of  to  furnish  'pleasant  associations  and 
companionship.'  Why  do  they  hand  it  to  us 
girls  sugar-coated?" 

It  is  a  great  mistake.  The  business  girl  is  not 
accustomed  to  things  sugar-coated.  She  deals 
largely  with  men  and  often  with  men  to  whom 
she  is  only  a  good  machine.  If  by  word,  look 
or  appeal  of  any  sort  she  reminds  them  that  she 
is  a  girl,  her  usefulness  ceases  and  complications 


The  Businesi  Girl  77 

of  all  sorts  arise.  She  is  accustomed  to  orden 
without  explanations ;  she  sees,  under  the  stress 
of  business  competition,  character  revealed.  She 
knows  the  weaknesses,  foibles  and  sins  of  man- 
kind and  she  wants  help,  if  at  all,  from  those 
who,  although  they  also  understand  and  appre- 
ciate, yet  in  the  face  of  facts  challenge  her  to 
rise  to  her  best. 

I  asked  a  group  of  business  girls  recently  to 
write  out  for  me  a  list  of  what  they  considered 
the  weaknesses  and  the  virtues  of  business  girls. 
In  those  lists  I  found  a  remarkable  agreement. 
Among  the  virtues  most  often  listed  were:  hon- 
esty, sincerity  (defined  often  as  hatred  of 
hypocrisy),  faithfulness,  promptness,  accuracy. 
Other  girls  said,  "the  business  girl  can  be 
counted  on,"  "she  makes  a  good  friend,"  "she  is 
self-reliant  and  reliable,"  etc.  Her  weaknesses 
as  listed  by  herself  were  most  interesting — I 
copy  from  some  of  the  papers:  "the  everlasting 
vanity  bag,"  "the  longing  for  clothes,"  "the 
temptation  to  have  a  good  time,"  "no  real  in- 
terest in  the  work,"  "carelessness,"  "shirking," 
"complaining  of  work,"  "a  craze  for  amuse- 
ments," "lying  about  the  things  she  does  week- 
ends," "flirting,"  "spending  all  she  earns,"  etc. 

It  seemed  to  me  as  I  read  and  reread  the  lists 


78      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

that  no  one  could,  even  by  long  study,  observa- 
tion and  association,  analyze  the  business  girl 
more  clearly  than  she  had  analyzed  herself. 

Her  employer  says  that  she  is  careless,  that 
he  has  to  waste  his  valuable  time  repeating 
directions  and  orders,  that  her  English  and  her 
spelling  are  a  great  annoyance  to  him,  that  she 
will  not  take  responsibility,  that  she  is  not  worth 
more  than  nine  or  ten  dollars,  that  he  would 
gladly  pay  more  for  satisfactory  help,  that  the 
business  girl  who  receives  the  lowest  salary  re- 
ceives it  because  she  is  worth  no  more,  and  that 
she  is  poorly  prepared  for  her  work.  I  believe 
that  his  criticism  ar.d  her  acknowledgment  are 
not  without  foundation,  and  the  fault  lies  with 
home  and  school.  No  community  has  a  right  to 
send  its  girls  into  any  form  of  self-support 
unfitted.  The  home  must  be  taught  and  inspired 
to  place  responsibility  upon  the  child  and  to 
train  her  in  habits  of  careful  work.  It  does  not 
so  train  her  today,  for  it  lacks  vision.  The 
school  must  be  given  a  chance  to  train  her  in 
accuracy  of  expression,  in  the  common  branches 
of  every-day  English  and  spelling.  It  cannot  so 
train  her  today  because  of  the  multitude  of  sub- 
jects it  attempts  to  teach  and  the  impossible 
number  of  pupils  that  one  teacher  is  required  to 


The  Business  Girl  79 

handle.  I  stood  in  a  classroom  the  other  day 
where  there  were  sixty  pupils  taking  a  lesson  in 
shorthand.  The  lesson  period  was  one  half-hour. 
There  was  absolutely  no  opportunity  for  indi- 
vidual work,  the  room  was  dimly  lighted  and  one 
could  see  at  a  glance  how  poorly  prepared  for 
office  work  such  pupils  would  be,  despite  the 
good  and  conscientious  work  of  the  teacher. 
The  business  man,  annoyed  and  handicapped  by 
poor  help,  must  not  content  himself  with  criti- 
cizing the  schools  but  must  give  himself  to  the 
task  of  demanding  better  conditions  for  the 
preparation  of  workers.  The  parent  must  not 
content  himself  with  a  tirade  against  the  em- 
ployer of  Edith  or  Louise  but  must  resolve  so 
to  train  her  that  she  will  have  abilities  which 
seldom  fail  to  earn  promotion.  To  fit  the  young 
worker  for  her  work  is  a  community  task,  it  be- 
longs to  home  and  city. 

It  is  true  that  the  "vanity  bag"  is  a  great 
means  of  wasting  time.  Countless  business  girls 
have  never  been  told  that  one  should  dress  in 
the  morning  for  her  day's  work  so  that  hair 
will  not  have  to  be  arranged  between  letters. 
Adults  take  for  granted  that  she  knows  that 
once  she  sits  at  her  desk  or  enters  her  office,  hf-r 
mind  should  be  upon  her  work,  but  adults  them- 


80      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

selves  know  much  which  they  do  not  translate 
into  action,  and  it  is  only  by  being  constantly 
reminded  and  inspired  that  one  forms  the  de- 
sirable habit  of  strict  attention  to  the  work  in 
hand.  Business  girls  need  such  inspiration,  they 
need  to  be  shown  that  concentration  is  the  key 
to  the  mastery  of  every  subject  or  task — the 
open  sesame  to  success.  While  we  laugh  about 
advice  given  to  youth  it  is  nevertheless  true  that 
youth  thinks  more  deeply  than  we  give  it  credit 
for,  and  the  young  business  girl  who  writes  me: 

"Mr.  says  that  a  miracle  has  happened  to 

me  during  the  past  month,  and  he  has  made  my 
salary  fourteen  dollars  a  week!  All  this  because 
of  the  inspiration  for  faithful  service  I  received 
at  the  Conference"  is  typical  of  what  might 
happen  to  many  a  young  girl  challenged  to 
measure  up  to  her  best.  It  is  easy  to  drift,  and 
all  girlhood  needs  the  call.  A  real  interest  in 
her  work  and  the  kindling  of  the  ambition  to 
excel  in  it  is  the  best  competitor  for  the  vanity 
bag.  "The  days  are  gone  now  before  I  know 
it,"  said  a  formerly  careless,  indifferent  girl 
who  had  seen  a  vision.  It  is  the  privilege  of  the 
community  to  furnish  inspiration  to  its  young 
girl  workeri  through  continuation  courses, 


The  Businest  Girl  81 

through  lectures  and  through  wide-awake,  well- 
chosen  books  upon  the  library  shelves  especially 
set  apart  for  business  women  and  girls.  What 
the  employer  finds  in  his  business  magazines, 
Rotary  Club  or  special  conventions,  his  employed 
office  staff  should  find  somewhere. 

The  girl  who  lives  for  evenings  and  week-ends, 
to  whom  work  is  an  awful  necessity  to  be  endured 
because  there  is  no  escape,  can  be  found  in  every 
office  building.  She  will  change  positions  often 
but  none  of  them  will  be  right.  Her  salary  will 
always  be  small,  her  employer  inconsiderate, 
those  who  work  with  her  disagreeable.  She  is 
the  type  of  girl  who  through  dinner,  theater,  the 
dance,  falls  easily  into  grave  temptations  that 
so  often  prove  her  undoing.  To  help  her  is  a 
difficult  matter.  The  late  hours  mean  poor 
health  and  consequent  lack  of  the  vitality  which 
quickens  interest.  The  association  with  different 
men  who  offer  her  the  opportunity  to  gratify  her 
desire  for  excitement  and  a  good  time  leaves 
her  unsatisfied  and  restless.  She  needs  whole- 
some group  good  times  of  a  simple  nature  with 
opportunity  to  express  herself.  I  have  wit- 
nessed during  the  past  year  or  more  the  complete 
transformation  of  a  girl  who  when  I  first  knew 
her  would  go  to  almost  any  length  to  secure  an 


82      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

invitation  from  men  friends  and  acquaintances 
for  theater,  dance,  "movies"  or,  in  the  summer, 
a  trip  to  shore  or  park.  She  was  persuaded  to 
join  a  club  of  girls  numbering  about  a  hundred. 
She  went  for  ten  days  to  their  summer  camp  and 
the  experience  there  gave  her  new  visions,  the 
old  method  of  "managing"  to  have  a  good  time 
grew  distasteful  and  she  gave  herself  more  and 
more  to  the  activities  of  the  club,  and  was  elected 
to  office.  The  men  she  met  at  the  occasional 
special  evenings  and  entertainments  were  of  a 
higher  order  than  she  had  known.  Her  dress 
reflected  the  change  in  herself;  she  wore  no  more 
last  year's  "best  clothes"  and  "best  shoes"  to 
the  office  but  dressed  in  good  business  girl  taste. 
Her  new  interest  in  life  shows  in  her  work,  and 
in  every  way  her  improvement  is  most  marked. 
What  she  had  needed  she  found — friends  a  little 
older  and  of  higher  type  than  she,  but  alive,  full 
of  fun,  ambition  and  hope.  These  girls  knew 
how  to  enjoy  evenings  and  Saturdays  and  come 
back  to  work  "fit."  I  know  of  no  case  that 
demonstrates  more  fully  the  power  of  leadership 
that  lies  in  the  hands  of  the  older  business  girl. 
She  may  make  what  she  will  of  her  younger  sister. 
Before  the  problems  of  business-girl  life  are 
solved  the  older  girl  must  be  awakened  to  her 


The  Business  Girl  83 

duty  and  privilege  toward  the  younger  girl.  She 
has  the  first-hand  contact. 

The  business  girl  as  a  rule  has  better  food,  a 
better  place  in  which  to  live  and  better  prepara- 
tion for  life  than  her  industrial  sister.  She  has 
more  of  resource  and  initiative.  She  needs  lead- 
ership rather  than  guidance  and  specific  direc- 
tion. Right  here  so  many  of  the  agencies  that 
want  to  help  her,  fail.  They  try  to  do  things 
for  her  rather  than  with  her.  The  Y.  W.  C.  A., 
when  it  has  recognized  these  facts,  has  been  of 
inestimable  value  to  her.  If  it  has  organized  a 
business  women's  branch,  with  a  special  secretary 
and  an  executive  committee  chosen  from  the 
business  women  themselves,  it  will  succeed.  Busi- 
ness girls  are  accustomed  to  business  methods 
and  are  able  to  conduct  their  own  business  affairs 
with  dignity  and  skill.  They  are  eager  to  finance 
their  own  work  as  far  as  they  are  able  and  are 
willing  to  deny  themselves  in  order  to  do  it.  The 
gymnasium  and  the  swimming-pool  make  a  par- 
ticular appeal  to  the  business  girl,  and  every 
city,  either  through  its  municipal  buildings  or 
through  its  Christian  Association,  should  offer 
her  both.  It  will  be  an  investment  paying  large 
dividends  in  the  health  and  efficiency  of  the  girls. 

The   business   girl   responds   not    only   to   the 


84      Tht  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

right  sort  of  recreation,  but  also  to  the  call  to 
self-improvement  through  evening  classes.  I  met, 
a  while  ago,  a  group  of  metropolitan  business 
girls  in  a  current-events  class  that  was  a  liberal 
education.  I  have  met  them  in  numberless  Bible 
classes  where  they  are  doing  intelligent  and  defi- 
nite work.  I  have  found  them  in  first  aid  classes, 
in  Spanish  classes,  in  reading  clubs. 

The  business  girl  is  self-sacrificing  and  heroic 
in  spirit  as  is  her  industrial  sister.  Within  the 
week  it  has  been  my  privilege  to  work  in  close 
touch  with  a  Business  Girls'  Council,  numbering 
in  all  about  three  thousand  young  women  and 
girls,  upon  the  task  of  raising  five  thousand 
dollars  for  war  work.  The  executive  committee 
of  the  Council  had  a  banquet  at  which  the  appeal 
was  heard  and  the  plans  made.  The  personnel 
of  this  committee  was  most  interesting.  They 
were  girls  who  hold  positions  of  responsi- 
bility in  the  leading  business  firms  of  a  great 
city.  A  woman  of  leisure  who  attended  the  ban- 
quet said,  with  deep  earnestness,  "I  feel  so  in- 
adequate and  inefficient  in  their  presence.  They 
are  such  fine  specimens  of  young  womanhood,  so 
far-sighted  and  clear-minded."  And  it  was  true. 
Every  one  of  them  had  earned  her  position  and 
th«  increase  in  salary  that  went  with  it.  As  th« 


Tht  Business  Girl  85 

campaign  progressed,  we  were  able  to  se«  th« 
"stuff"  of  which  the  business  girl  is  made.  Sh« 
has  raised  that  five  thousand  dollars  by  sacrifice, 
and  even  the  youngest  recruit  in  the  business 
ranks  has  contributed.  Girls  have  walked  to 
business,  have  economized  on  lunch,  given  up 
Christmas  gifts,  put  aside  the  hope  for  winter 
coats  and  furs,  worked  evenings,  in  fact  reached 
out  in  every  direction  as  well  as  deep  down  into 
their  own  pockets  to  meet  the  need.  More  than 
half  the  business  girls  in  this  Council  have 
dependents — mothers,  invalid  sisters,  brothers, 
fathers.  Very  few  are  wholly  without  financial 
burdens.  Many  have  neither  time  nor  strength  to 
vary  the  routine  of  their  days  by  real  pleasure 
which  would  be  refreshing  and  upbuilding,  but 
they  accept  in  a  wonderfully  philosophical  spirit 
the  duties  and  the  burdens.  They  are  a  glorious 
company,  and  were  they  suddenly  to  drop  out  of 
their  offices  tomorrow  morning  their  city  would 
be  in  a  chaotic  state  indeed. 

Business  girls  have  many  needs.  They  need 
better  preparation,  and  better  pay.  The  salaries 
they  receive  are  altogether  inadequate  to  the 
standard  of  living  they  ought  to  be  able  to 
maintain.  The  salary  should  insure  a  decent 
and  comfortable  place  in  which  to  live,  enough 


86      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

nourishing  food  and  suitable  clothing.  It  should 
be  enough  to  encourage  thrift  and  make  unneces- 
sary the  woefully  pathetic  economies  of  the 
young  business  girl — especially  the  thousands  of 
girls  living  away  from  home. 

The  business  girl  needs  clean  amusement  and 
recreation  for  the  reasonable  sum  that  she  can 
pay.  The  community  should  give  it  to  her.  She 
needs  the  protection  of  good  laws  relating  to  the 
moral  condition  of  places  where  she  may  be  per- 
mitted to  work,  the  hours  overtime,  the  sanitary 
condition  of  offices.  She  needs  health  insurance 
and  thrift  organizations.  She  needs  the  protec- 
tion of  a  welfare  worker  in  every  large  office 
building,  who  can  be  friend  and  adviser  and  can 
set  and  maintain  standards.  She  needs  the 
church,  a  living,  vitalized  church,  interested  in 
her,  acknowledging  the  debt  of  society  to  her, 
eager  to  give  her  what  she  wants,  to  make  a 
place  where  she  can  effectually  serve — for  the 
business  girl  is  solidly  against  take  with  no  de- 
mand to  give.  She  needs  the  incentives,  ideals 
and  challenges  which  the  church  ought  to  be  able 
to  give. 

The  business  girl  marries,  and  only  a  very 
small  proportion  of  girls  trained  in  business 
prove  inefficient  home-makers.  They  are  not,  as 


The  Business  Girl  87 

a  rule,  afraid  of  hardship,  they  willingly  accept 
motherhood.  Many  of  the  happiest  homes  I  have 
known  have  been  the  homes  of  trained  business 
girls. 

The  life  of  the  business  girl  is  a  strain,  it  is 
keyed  high,  it  has  many  powerful  and  subtle 
temptations,  but  there  is  today  no  more  self- 
reliant,  dependable,  efficient  group  of  women  in 
America  than  the  business  girls  who  have  made 
good.  If  the  community  will  seek  to  be  worthy 
of  them,  to  give  them  opportunity  for  a  just 
return  for  their  labors,  they  will  march  steadily 
on  to  even  more  valuable  service  in  the  new 
democracy  of  which  we  dream. 


VII 
THE  SCHOOLGIRL 


THE   SCHOOLGIRL 

SHE  is  as  varied  in  type  as  her  industrial  or 
business  sister.  As  with  them,  certain  defi- 
nite characteristics  distinguish  her.  To  me 
her  great  outstanding  characteristic  is  her  spon- 
taneity, her  vivacity,  in  short,  her  youth.  The 
schoolgirl  of  eighteen,  and  the  industrial  and 
the  business  girl  of  the  same  age  present  con- 
trasts that  compel  one  to  think.  As  a  rule  the 
industrial  girl  bears  on  her  face  the  marks  of 
care.  She  has  been  two,  even  four  years  doing 
her  part  in  the  whirl  of  industry,  and  a  certain 
weariness  records  itself  in  her  eyes.  The  busi- 
ness girl  has  already  acquired  the  keen  look  that 
"sizes  up"  people  and  things,  and  the  pressure 
of  the  business  day  added  to  the  evening  hours 
when  she  seeks  recreation  means  that  she  has 
early  lost  the  carefree  expression  one  finds  upon 
the  face  of  the  schoolgirl.  Her  eyes  have  often 
lost  their  sparkle  and  there  is  a  noticeable  lack 
of  resilience.  The  average  high-school  girl,  a 
senior  at  eighteen,  or  the  college  freshman  of  the 
same  age,  appears  to  be,  in  the  majority  of  cases, 
just  what  she  is  called — a  girl.  Womanhood  and 


92      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

its  cares  come  late  to  her.  At  sixteen  and  at 
twenty-two  the  same  comparisons  are  true.  The 
schoolgirl  keeps  a  freshness,  an  interest  and  en- 
thusiasm that  one  covets  for  all  girls. 

As  a  rule  the  girl  who  remains  in  school  after 
her  sixteenth  year  comes  from  a  home  where 
enough,  plenty  or  abundance  sums  up  conditions. 
Occasionally  over-abundance  must  be  added. 
She  belongs  to  the  more  fortunate  daughters  of 
men.  She  represents  varied  spheres  of  life,  but 
she  has  a  chance  to  reach  a  more  or  less  full 
development  before  the  pressure  of  responsibili- 
ties and  burdens  falls  heavily  upon  her.  If  every 
American  girl  could  be  given  the  advantages 
of  school  until  twenty-one  and  then  enter  upon 
the  duties  of  home-making,  business  or  industry, 
trained  and  fitted  to  meet  them,  America  would 
soon  be  a  paradise.  The  trained  mind  has  re- 
sources, the  developed  body  has  reserves  which 
give  a  spiritual  poise  and  balance  that  mean 
power. 

Only  a  very  small  percentage  of  American  girl- 
hood continues  school  beyond  the  grades,  a  still 
smaller  proportion  beyond  the  high  school.  As 
long  as  this  statement  remains  a  fact,  there  will 
be  dangerous  and  regrettable  cleavages  in 
society.  How  the  school  years  of  every  Amer- 


The  Schoolgirl  93 

ican  girl  may  be  prolonged  is  a  question  worthy 
the  study  of  the  keenest  and  most  far-seeing 
minds,  as  well  as  the  most  patriotic. 

When  we  study  the  girl  at  close  range  during 
her  high-school  years  we  can  see  clearly  the 
dangers  that  menace  her  highest  development. 
She  often  enters  the  high  school  with  a  wrong 
scale  of  values  for  which  she  is  not  personally 
responsible. 

In  the  ordinary  grammar  school  she  has  been 
associated  with  all  the  pupils  of  the  grade.  She 
has  looked  upon  her  "class"  or  "room"  as  a  unit. 
There  has  been  little  departmental  work  and 
practically  no  division  into  groups.  She  has 
prepared  most  of  her  lessons  in  school,  studying 
under  the  eye  of  the  teacher.  These  conditions 
she  leaves  behind  in  June,  and  in  September  is 
plunged  into  a  system  and  set  of  circumstances 
wholly  new.  The  high  school  is  conducted  upon 
an  absolutely  different  plan.  She  is  about  four- 
teen years  of  age,  which  means  that  she  is  in  the 
midst  of  a  series  of  rapidly  changing  physical 
and  mental  conditions.  She  finds  many  of  the 
faces  familiar  to  her  in  the  grade  school  missing 
— the  girls  have  gone  to  work.  She  is  aware 
sub-consciously  if  not  consciously  of  a  difference: 


94      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

she  is  to  go  on  in  school,  they  must  earn  their 
living. 

No  one  who  has  taught  girls  of  this  period  in 
the  public  or  the  Sunday  school  or  in  clubs  and 
organizations  of  various  sorts  fails  to  be  very 
conscious  of  the  barrier  which  rises  at  this  time 
between  the  girls  of  the  high  school  and  the 
girls  of  the  shop  and  factory.  In  places  where 
the  junior  high  school  with  vocational  guidance 
has  been  successfully  established,  this  break 
comes  much  more  naturally  and  gradually  and 
under  conditions  far  less  marked.  Lacking  this 
preparation,  the  fourteen-year-old  girl  finds  her- 
self in  a  comparatively  small  division  or  group  or- 
ganized upon  her  future  hopes  as  a  basis.  That 
is,  if  she  hopes  to  enter  business  life  she  finds 
herself  in  the  commercial  division,  class,  or,  if  the 
city  is  large,  the  Commercial  or  English  High 
School.  Other  girls  with  whom  she  played  freely 
and  associated  happily  in  the  lower  grades  she 
finds  in  the  Classical  High  School  or,  in  the 
smaller  towns,  in  the  college  preparatory  or 
classical  division.  Unaccustomed  to  depart- 
mental work,  she  places  an  importance  upon 
these  divisions  which  is  unfair  to  herself  and  her 
friends.  She  reveals  very  soon,  not  the  apprecia- 
tion of  the  value  of  college  training,  but  th« 


The  Schoolgirl  05 

recognition  of  the  fact  that  here  is  a  girl  who 
can  go  to  college,  here  is  one  who  will  enter  the 
normal  school  and  another  who  will  enter  busi- 
ness life.  In  her  thought  she  establishes  a  social 
gradation.  Within  a  week  I  have  heard  the  fol- 
lowing very  suggestive  comment:  "Did  you  say 
Alice  was  in  the  college  division?  I  had  no  idea 
she  had  money  enough  to  go  to  college!"  An 
eighteen-year-old  girl  said  it,  and  at  first  thought 
it  seems  a  harmless  remark,  but  it  places  a  defi- 
nite money  value  upon  college.  It  draws  a  line 
of  cleavage  with  a  gold  pencil.  A  little  later  at 
a  church  social  for  high-school  girls,  I  heard: 
"Barbara  D — ?  No,  she  isn't  here.  She  goes 
over  to  the  Classical.  She  goes  around  with  the 
swells.  She's  going  to  college."  It  was  said  by 
a  girl  in  the  commercial  department  of  the  "Eng- 
lish High."  It  revealed  much  that  ought  not  to 
exist  in  a  democracy.  In  places  where  the 
junior  high  school  has  been  effective,  the  group- 
ings which  we  must  have  if  our  girls  are  to  be 
especially  prepared  for  their  coming  tasks  have 
been  brought  about  naturally  and  the  younger 
girl  thinks  little  of  it.  More  than  that,  the  study 
of  the  various  vocations  by  all  the  girls  has 
made  them  appreciate  the  value  of  all  vocations, 
their  interrelation  and  interdependence,  and 


06      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

wise  studies  in  civics  have  given  to  them  new 
concepts  of  the  meaning  of  community  and 
cooperation  which  are  denied  girls  who  plunge 
into  high-school  work  directly  from  the  ordinary 
class  work  of  the  grades.  What  has  been  ac- 
complished in  the  difficult  task  of  democratizing 
girlhood  makes  us  hopeful  for  the  future  and 
eager  that  all  girls  should  have  the  training 
which  shall  establish  a  right  scale  of  values. 
What  one  is,  not  what  one  has,  must  be  the  future 
measuring-rod  of  women.  Those  women  are 
being  made  now. 

When  mothers  grow  wise  enough  to  dress  their 
schoolgirl  daughters  becomingly  but  with  true 
simplicity,  we  shall  take  a  long  step  forward. 
The  present  gain  in  this  line  promises  much.  It 
may  be  that  school  faculties  need  also  a  deeper 
realization  of  true  values,  for  at  times  one 
detects  a  hint  of  the  feeling  that  the  teachers  in 
certain  departments  of  the  high  school,  certain 
buildings  or  grades  of  the  grammar  school  are 
higher  up  in  the  social  scale  or  of  greater  value 
to  the  community.  Any  such  lurking  feeling  is 
bound  to  bear  fruit  unworthy  of  a  noble  profes- 
sion. Not  what  subject  one  teaches  to  a  girl,  not 
the  place  where  one  teaches,  but  what  one  teachei 
is  the  standard  of  measurement. 


The  Schoolgirl  97 

All  men  and  women  interested  in  the  welfare 
of  girlhood  must  see  to  it  that  the  education  of 
today  fits  it  for  that  world  democracy  of  tomor- 
row for  which  millions  now  suffer  and  die. 
America  needs  to  humanize  all  her  educational 
work,  but  most  of  all  that  of  her  colleges. 

A  new  spirit  has  been  gradually  entering  col- 
lege walls  in  recent  years  and  can  be  powerfully 
felt  today.  The  college  girl  in  the  main  has  grown 
democratic  in  spirit,  in  act  as  well  as  in  word, 
as  is  evidenced  by  no  one  thing  more  than  by  the 
lessening  hold  and  in  many  cases  the  disappear- 
ance of  the  sorority — a  thing  which  has  no  right 
to  exist  in  the  educational  institutions  of  a 
democracy.  The  majority  of  college  girls  today 
accept  their  privilege  as  a  responsibility.  The 
increasing  number  preparing  to  enter  the  pro- 
fessions whose  object  and  passion  is  human  wel- 
fare, the  list  of  colleges  at  present  represented 
in  welfare  undertakings,  in  preventive  and  re- 
construction work  which  demands  great  sacrifice, 
long  hours  and  little  money  return,  is  one  of  the 
most  encouraging  things  that  has  come  about  in 
the  world  of  women  in  a  generation.  The  college 
door  must  however  be  opened  far  wider  than  at 
present,  that  the  largest  number  possible  may  be 


98      The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

given  the  advantages  which  higher  education 
brings. 

Although  more  protected  and  living  a  more 
natural  and  normal  life  than  most  of  her  sisters, 
the  schoolgirl  is  not  without  temptations.  In 
common  with  all  girlhood,  she  shares  the  tempta- 
tation  to  procrastinate  and  to  trust  the  last 
moment's  "cram"  to  do  for  her  what  faithful 
daily  work  could  more  easily  do ;  she  finds  it  easy 
to  yield  to  the  temptation  to  "get  by"  or  to 
sacrifice  honesty  on  the  altar  of  a  passing  mark. 
She  finds  it  hard  to  resist  the  temptation  to  have 
a  "good  time"  even  at  the  cost  of  great  sacrifice 
on  the  part  of  parents  or  neglect  of  studies  and 
home  duties.  She  finds  it  difficult  to  keep  her 
standards  of  purity  always  high,  and  when  un- 
wise school  boards  and  parents  permit  abuse  of 
the  school  dance,  class  party,  and  countless  other 
forms  of  expression  of  social  impulses  desirable 
in  themselves,  she  may  be  in  very  real  danger. 
A  wholesome  out-of-door  life,  food,  sleep,  exer- 
cise and  good  companions  make  for  her  safety, 
but  they  often  seem  so  commonplace  that  she 
passes  them  by. 

The  greatest  needs  in  the  life  of  the  school 
and  college  girl  from  thirteen  to  twenty-two 
are  inspiration,  leadership  and  direction.  Given 


The  Schoolgirl  99 

normal  conditions  of  home  life  or  well-disciplined 
dormitory  life,  the  schoolgirls  of  America  aro 
safe  if  in  their  classrooms  they  can  come  daily 
in  contact  with  men  and  women  greater  than  the 
text-books  from  which  they  teach  and  the  courses 
of  study  they  follow;  great  enough  to  sympathize 
with  and  understand  the  dreams  and  hopes  of 
youth,  and  to  direct  them  into  right  channels  of 
expression ;  great  enough  to  be  able  to  lead  their 
girls  out  into  a  real  world  where  men  and  women 
struggle  to  find  the  way  to  happiness  for  their 
children ;  great  enough  to  inspire  them  with  a 
passion  to  contribute  their  full  share  to  the  solu- 
tion of  life's  problems,  to  cooperate  with  any  who 
toil  unselfishly  for  the  good  of  all,  and  share  the 
burden  that  all  girlhood  must  bear  today  if  it  is 
not  to  be  left  to  rest  even  more  heavily  upon  the 
ihoulders  of  the  girls  of  tomorrow. 


VIII 
THE  GIRL  AT  HOME 


THE  GIRL  AT  HOME 

WHEN  one  speaks  the  word  "home"  in 
these  days,  so  many  pictures  of  the 
places  which  people  call  by  that  sacred 
name  flash  upon  his  mental  screen  that  he  is  at 
once  confused.  The  other  night  one  of  the  girli 
whom  I  greatly  admire  bade  me  good-bye  saying, 
"Well,  I  must  hurry  home."  I  caught  my  breath 
at  the  word.  There  were  cold,  poverty,  illnesi 
and  misery  in  that  home.  She  could  hardly  bear 
up  under  the  awful  burden.  It  was  in  a  neigh- 
borhood wearing  the  marks  of  rapid  degenera- 
tion, and  "home"  was  three  small  rooms  at  the 
end  of  a  hopelessly  dark  hall,  sadly  in  need  of 
repairs.  Two  or  three  days  before,  after  talking 
with  hundreds  of  women  and  girls,  I  had  entered 
a  luxurious  machine  and  heard  a  girl  of  Florence's 
age  say  one  word  to  the  chauffeur,  "Home." 
The  memory  of  the  glory  of  the  sunset,  the  white 
stretches  of  the  park,  the  artistic,  well-built 
house,  the  pictures,  the  fireplaces,  the  air  of 
warmth  and  comfort,  protection  and  refinement, 
the  dainty  room,  perfect  in  its  appointments, 
all  this  was  home  to  her,  and  all  the  way  between. 


104    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

in  the  long  line  stretching  from  poverty  t» 
luxury,  I  could  see  the  homes  of  the  American 
girl. 

But  I  am  not  to  attempt  in  this  study  to 
follow  the  girl  into  the  varied  types  of  homes  in 
the  mountains  and  on  the  prairies,  in  the  country 
and  the  city,  but  rather  to  emphasize  a  few  things 
that  knowledge  of  and  friendship  with  girls  have 
made  stand  out  so  definitely  that  one  cannot  miss 
their  significance. 

Except  in  cases  where  serious  illness  or  the 
mother's  death  have  made  it  absolutely  necessary, 
there  are  no  girls  from  sixteen  to  twenty-five  in 
poverty-stricken  homes.  Where  there  is  poverty, 
the  daughter  of  the  house  goes  early  to  work. 
The  girls  at  home  in  America  today  are  in  homes 
of  comfort  or  luxury,  or  they  are  in  isolated 
places  where,  having  early  exhausted  the  school 
privileges,  they  are  sharers  in  the  domestic  duties 
of  simple  homes  where  food  and  comfortable 
clothing  are  supplied. 

The  one  great  outstanding  characteristic  of 
the  girl  at  home  in  America,  as  I  have  known 
her,  seems  to  be  her  discontent.  If  she  becomes 
a  part  of  the  social  machine  immediately  after 
finishing-school  or  boarding-school  or,  in  the 
past,  continental  training,  she  usually  lives  * 


Tht  Girl  at  Home  10* 

rery  busy,  hurried,  exciting  and  interesting  life. 
For  two,  in  rare  cases  three  years,  she  finds 
•atisfaction  in  it.  If  during  that  time  she  mar- 
ries, her  future  is,  in  a  sense,  marked  out  for 
her.  If  she  does  not — the  restlessness  begins  t» 
manifest  itself.  She  must  have  something  to  do, 
she  tells  me.  She  is  often  a  splendid  specimen 
of  young  womanhood,  physically  and  mentally 
sound.  To  give  her  energies  some  field  of  expres- 
sion, I  find  her  "studying"  more  or  less  seriously. 
Sometimes  it  is  art,  often  music.  Now  and  then 
she  decides,  even  in  the  face  of  great  opposition, 
to  train  as  a  physician  or  nurse,  and  in  excep- 
tional cases  she  carries  it  through.  Or  she  believes 
that  she  can  write,  and  searches  all  phases  of  life 
for  material  and  atmosphere.  Often  she  begins  to 
show  a  very  deep  interest  in  causes.  Sometimes 
it  is  suffrage,  again  child  welfare,  now  and  then 
she  develops  a  strong  socialistic  or  radical  sense 
and,  as  far  as  she  is  permitted  to  do  so,  makes 
associations  with  people  who  are  "advanced"  in 
thought  as  she  believes  herself  to  be.  Occasion- 
ally she  turns  to  the  church  as  a  field  in  which 
to  express  her  life  and  energy.  Often,  unsatisfied 
by  any  of  these  means  by  which  she  seeks  to 
train  herself  to  contribute  to  life  and  enjoy  it, 
she  drifts  from  one  to  another  and  the  splendid 


10§    Tht  American  Girl  and  H§T  Community 

power  of  her  womanhood  is  wasted  or  lost.  Often 
her  lack  of  a  great  consuming  interest  explains 
the  slow  loss  of  that  radiant  health  with  which 
nourishing  food,  fresh  air,  exercise  and  scrupulous 
care  for  eighteen  or  twenty  years  had  endowed 
her. 

I  see  her  in  New  York,  Chicago  and  Boston. 
I  meet  her  in  the  mountains  or  on  the  shore.  I 
see  her  in  California  or  Florida.  She  is  busy — 
very  busy.  Sometimes  she  tells  me  that  she  has 
had  a  hectic  winter.  When  she  drops  the  re- 
straint that  good  breeding  has  given  her,  she 
tells  me  that  she  is  discontented  and  unhappy. 
She  says  the  most  loyal  things  of  her  father,  and 
many  a  mother  would  thrill  with  joy  if  she  could 
hear  her  daughter's  testimony  as  to  her  goodness 
and  greatness.  She  ends  by  saying  that  "neither 
father  nor  mother  understands" — which  is  per- 
fectly true.  Her  father  believes  that  when  he 
has  given  her  things  he  has  done  his  best.  He 
has  met  every  demand  for  her  education,  he  has 
given  generously  to  meet  all  her  social  require- 
ments. That  the  long  process  of  her  development 
should  be  in  any  way  a  failure,  he  could  not, 
except  in  rare  cases,  understand.  Her  mother 
has  done  her  best.  In  every  last  detail  she  has 
been  faithful.  She  ha«  prepared  her  daughter 


Th<  Girl  at  Horn*  107 

for  the  sphere  in  which  she  expects  her  to  move. 
But  her  mother  married  when  she  was  twenty, 
and  home  interests,  her  children,  her  social  life 
and  conventional  charitable  work  claimed  her  full 
time.  When  her  daughter  leaves  the  shelter  of  her 
beautiful  home  and  goes  down  to  the  dark  streets 
over  which  the  elevated  trains  crash  and  roar, 
to  give  the  latter  part  of  an  afternoon  to  teach- 
ing a  class  of  little,  pale,  anaemic  daughters  of 
the  poor  and  unfortunate  to  sew,  and  returns 
for  dinner  troubled,  silent,  unmoved  by  the 
prospect  of  theater  or  opera  for  the  evening, 
that  mother  does  not  understand.  Her  daughter 
has  grown  accustomed  to  theater  and  opera.  Of 
late  she  has  acquired  a  deep  interest  in  the 
human  beings  who  play  the  parts  in  each.  She  is 
confused  and  puzzled  by  the  grave  contrasts  she 
sees  in  life.  She  writes,  pathetically  it  seems  to 
me,  "There  is  something  wrong  in  the  great  ex- 
tremes one  sees  in  city  life.  I  do  not  believe  that 
giving  a  part  of  my  allowance  and  teaching  a 
class  on  Thursdays  and  Sundays  is  a  fair  con- 
tribution. I  want  to  do  something  worth  while." 
"I  want  to  do  something  worth  while"  gives 
hope  to  all  those  who  are  studying  closely  the 
girlhood  of  today  that  they  may  see  what 


108    Tht  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

are  the  signs  of  promise  for  the  womanhood  of 
tomorrow. 

I  believe  that  the  girl  who  does  not  expect  to 
"earn  her  own  livelihood"  must  be  taught  that 
duty  and  self-respect  demand  that  her  life  shall 
be  in  some  fashion  a  real  contribution  to  the 
welfare  of  the  human  race.  She  should  be  trained 
to  shrink  from  the  thought  of  receiving  without 
giving,  as  from  the  thought  of  any  other  disgrace. 
One  of  the  things  in  life  that  most  deeply  impresses 
me  is  the  mighty  power  of  an  intangible  ideal.  It 
reaches  down  and  out  and  up  until  it  affects  all 
life,  just  how  or  when  one  cannot  say.  Just  a 
little  while  ago,  a  woman  told  me  with  pride  and 
satisfaction  of  her  daughter's  presentation  at  the 
German  court,  of  the  attention  paid  her,  because 
of  her  rare  beauty  and  accomplishments,  by  offi- 
cers of  the  highest  ranks  in  "the  military,"  of  all 
the  honors  in  the  social  world  that  had  already 
come  to  her.  That  woman  has  two  sons.  One  is 
now  a  non-commissioned  officer  in  one  of  our  large 
cantonments,  the  other  is  in  the  aviation  service. 
The  daughter,  who  was  presented  amidst  such 
pomp  and  splendor  at  court,  has  married  a  young 
non-commissioned  officer  in  the  American  Army. 
She  is  living  in  a  very  ordinary  hotel  so  as  to  be 
near  him  as  long  as  she  can  before  he  must  go  over- 


The  Girl  at  Horn*  109 

seas.  Then  she  plans  to  go  into  her  father's  office, 
where  help  is  greatly  needed.  And  the  mother  it 
content.  But  before  the  war  she  would  not  per- 
mit any  attentions  to  her  daughter  on  the  part 
of  the  young  man  she  has  married.  That  mother 
never  mentions  the  German  court  now.  She  says 
nothing  of  "the  military."  An  ideal  has  seized 
even  her  ambitious  soul — the  ideal  of  democracy 
versus  autocracy.  And  the  ideal  reaching  out 
into  all  the  ramifications  of  social  life  has  made 
it  seem  perfectly  natural  and  right  for  her  daugh- 
ter to  marry  the  man  who,  when  he  enlisted,  was 
only  one  young  lawyer  among  thousands  who 
had  hopes  and  dreams. 

If  the  ideals  of  democracy  can  persist  after 
the  war,  our  girls  who  are  not  expected  or  obliged 
to  earn  their  own  livelihood  can  be  free  to  marry 
young  and  start  homes  in  simple  fashion.  They 
can  be  trained  to  believe  in  simplicity  of  living,  to 
believe  that  duty  demands  that  children  come 
to  share  their  homes  and  that  those  children  have 
a  right  to  be  brought  up  by  their  mothers  and 
their  fathers.  They  can  be  trained  to  see  the 
glory  of  simple  home  life  without  drudgery,  with 
time  and  strength  for  normal  recreation.  They 
can  be  led  to  believe  that  the  nation  which  can 
evolve  an  economic  and  industrial  life  in  which 


110    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

homes  may  be  started  and  maintained  without 
that  awful,  deadly,  soul-destroying  fear  of  im- 
pending poverty  or  that  sickening,  joy-killing 
passion  for  social  ladders  on  which  to  climb,  will 
be  the  nation  to  survive  longest  and  to  rise  to 
greatest  heights  of  usefulness  and  success.  They 
can  breathe  in  the  atmosphere  of  cooperation  in- 
stead of  competition ;  they  can  absorb  the  princi- 
ples of  humanitarian  instead  of  commercialized 
governments  of  free  peoples.  When  that  old 
Virginia  patriot  said,  "Liberty  is  in  the  very 
air,"  he  spoke  the  truth.  Girlhood  breathes  in 
from  the  very  air  more  than  can  ever  be  directly 
and  concretely  taught  her.  But  it  must  be  in  the 
air.  At  present  it  is  only  upon  the  mountain-tops. 
I  believe  that  every  girl  who  will  at  the  close 
of  her  school  training  enter  upon  a  life  at  home 
must  be  trained  to  believe  that  duty  and  self- 
respect  as  well  as  personal  happiness  demand  that 
she  should  earnestly  and  devotedly  give  herself 
to  some  one  of  the  following  or  kindred  means  of 
service  to  the  world  which  is  constantly  contribut- 
ing to  her  welfare.  She  should  know,  by  super- 
vised observation  or  study  under  competent  lead- 
ership, the  conditions  under  which  childhood  and 
girlhood  live  and  attempt  to  develop  in  her  city 
or  country  home;  she  should  know  conditions  of 


The  Girl  at  Home  111 

labor  for  girls  in  her  community;  she  should  be 
intelligent  on  matters  of  local  and  national  gov- 
ernment, regardless  of  whether  she  expects  or 
desires  the  franchise ;  she  should  be  intelligent  on 
matters  of  income  and  taxation  and  on  matters 
of  laws  affecting  the  lives  and  privileges  of  chil- 
dren, girls  and  women — that  is,  she  should  spend 
some  part  of  each  day  or  some  entire  days  in  the 
effort  to  become  an  intelligent,  sane,  well-balanced 
human  being  able  to  bear  her  share  of  the  burden 
of  working  out  the  world's  problems.  Girls  who 
between  eighteen  and  twenty  have  been  and  are 
devoting  one  hour  a  day  to  reading,  study,  dis- 
cussion or  instruction  on  such  matters  have 
enough  material  for  thought  to  supply  their 
active  minds  and  need  not  seek  out  later  the 
"isms"  to  satisfy  their  mental  hunger.  The  years 
from  eighteen  to  twenty-five  should  not  be  years 
of  mental  starvation  or  undisciplined  will-o'-the- 
wisp  endeavors  to  answer  the  need  for  mental 
food.  Girls  spending  a  part  of  their  days  in 
serious  study  of  the  causes  of  human  success  or 
failure,  contrary  to  the  belief  of  some,  do  not 
lose  their  interest  in  common  men  and  common 
things,  but  they  do  develop  power  to  make  the 
men  whose  lives  they  may  be  asked  to  share  much 
happier. 


112    Tht  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

I  believe  that  the  girl  at  home,  if  she  is  to  be 
saved  from  a  self-centered  existence  and  given  an 
opportunity  to  enjoy  life,  must  set  aside  certain 
hours  of  the  day  or  week  for  direct  service  to 
others.  Young  girls  need  today,  more  than  any 
other  thing,  leadership.  The  world  of  youth  cries 
out  for  leadership — it  is  ready  to  go  anywhere. 
The  girl  from  eighteen  to  twenty-five,  not  obliged 
by  circumstances  to  spend  eight  hours  a  day  at  a 
definite  task,  having  herself  been  given  athletic 
training,  intelligent  guidance  in  physical  health 
and  habits,  and  social  advantages  of  every  sort, 
ought  to  be  able  to  furnish  that  leadership  for 
younger  girls.  But  today  in  America  the 
churches,  the  Sunday  schools,  girls'  clubs  of  every 
sort,  the  settlements,  the  day  nurseries,  the  Y.  W. 
C.  A.,  the  Camp  Fire  girls,  the  Girl  Scouts,  send 
out  appeal  after  appeal  in  vain.  Every  effort 
for  the  welfare  of  girls  handicapped  by  poverty 
or  by  carelessness,  by  lack  of  friendship  and  by 
undirected  recreation,  that  I  have  seen  fail  or 
die  during  the  last  ten  years  has  failed  or  died 
from  lack  of  leadership.  Many  of  the  girls  from 
eighteen  to  twenty-five,  with  whom  this  study  is 
concerned,  are  prepared  by  natural  gifts  and 
training  for  such  leadership,  others  can  easily  and 
in  short  courses  secure  definite  training  for  defi- 


The  Girl  at  HOTM  lit 

nite  tasks.  When  I  suggest  these  girls  as  aids,  to 
overburdened  and  earnest  paid  workers,  they 
shrug  their  shoulders.  "Absolutely  undesirable," 
they  tell  me.  "They  cannot  be  depended  upon. 
They  serve  as  it  pleases  their  fancy."  "Not  of 
much  use  in  solving  the  problem.  They  will  not 
take  the  work  seriously,"  a  finely  trained  and 
most  successful  college  girl  tells  me.  "I  cannot 
depend  upon  any  one  of  the  four  girls  who 
thought  she  would  like  to  play  the  piano  for  my 
gymnasium  classes  one  night  each  week,"  says 
another  young  woman  appealing  for  funds  to 
pay  a  pianist  upon  whom  she  can  depend. 

Sometimes,  in  defending  herself  against  these 
accusations,  the  girl  at  home  tells  me  that  she 
is  very  busy.  I  know  she  often  is — with  things 
that  begin  and  end  with  self.  Sometimes  she  tells 
me  that  she  "is  away  so  much  of  the  time."  I 
know — but  it  is  not  necessary  that  she  should  be. 
Often  she  tells  me  that  she  would  gladly  serve 
and  longs  to  do  so,  but  her  parents  are  unwilling. 
I  know — and  here  I  am  deeply  sympathetic;  the 
responsibility  is  lifted  from  her  shoulders  to 
theirs,  and  some  of  these  parents  are  destined 
to  have  rude  awakenings,  as  in  pain  and  agony 
the  new  democracy  finds  its  way  to  the  light. 

It   does  not  seem   fair   that   the   young  t}7pe- 


114    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

writer,  stenographer,  bookkeeper,  teacher,  clerk 
who  works  eight  hours  a  day  should  be  asked  to 
contribute  other  hours  to  voluntary  work  for  the 
guidance  of  younger  girls,  but  I  find  them  in 
every  church  and  Sunday  school,  in  girls'  clubs 
and  Y.  W.  C.  A.,  in  every  form  of  work  for  the 
other  girl. 

I  believe  that  both  the  parents  of  the  girl  at 
home  and  the  girl  herself  should  realize  that  the 
day  is  coming  when  there  shall  be  no  parasites 
in  the  social  order,  when  all  women  gladly  and 
as  though  it  were  a  high  privilege  will  contribute, 
according  to  their  ability  and  training,  to  the 
national  life.  In  learning  how  to  do  this  there 
will  doubtless  be  many  mistakes  made.  The 
over-zealous  and  the  impatient  will  swing  the 
pendulum  too  far,  but  it  will  return  to  a  sane 
center  from  which  growth  is  possible. 

I  have  said  practically  nothing  of  the  girl 
who,  for  various  reasons,  closed  her  school  days 
upon  graduation  from  the  high  school  and  is 
now  a  part  of  the  life  of  the  simple,  comfortable, 
American  home  in  city  or  town.  She  may  belong 
to  the  group  sharing  the  duties  of  the  home  with 
her  mother,  helping  care  for  and  train  the 
younger  children,  entering  into  the  family  plea- 
mrrefl  or  finding  enjoyment  in  her  free  time  with 


The  Girl  at  Home  115 

friends  of  her  own  choice.  She  is  making  a  very 
definite  contribution  to  community  life  in  the 
work  she  does  in  that  home,  but  one  usually  finds 
her  sharing  also  the  work  of  the  church  and 
helping  out  in  other  forms  of  organized  welfare 
work.  The  danger  is  that  she  will  drift  through 
the  days  and  lose  touch  with  the  great  things 
of  the  world.  One  such  girl  told  me  recently 
that  she  never  read  the  newspapers,  nor  did  she 
read  magazine  articles  on  current  topics  or 
problems.  She  is  letting  her  mind  stagnate. 
This  the  girl  at  home  must  not  do.  She  owes  it 
to  her  community,  to  her  family,  to  her  future, 
to  be  well  informed,  intelligent,  a  human  being 
alive  in  every  fiber,  who  sees  her  own  home 
precious  and  satisfying  in  relation  to  the  great 
world  in  which  those  dear  to  her  must  work  their 
way  to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 
The  girl  who  said  good-bye  to  school  days 
in  the  high  or  perchance  the  grammar  school, 
and  is  at  home  sharing  its  duties  and  pleasures, 
may  belong  to  the  group  I  meet  occasionally,  a 
small  group,  comparatively  speaking,  in  towns 
and  manufacturing  cities.  The  housework,  which 
mother  and  daughter  do  themselves,  is  done  in  the 
morning,  and  I  see  them  shopping  in  the  after- 
noon, or  going  to  the  movies,  to  such  matia«e0  as 


116    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

the  place  affords,  to  card-parties  innumerable  and 
teas  copied  after  the  pattern  of  larger  cities 
and  "society"  people. 

In  the  larger  cities  I  find  them  wandering 
about  department  stores  or  thronging  to  the 
matinee  twice  a  week,  or  to  the  movies  whenever 
the  program  changes.  They  cannot  talk  with 
me  about  books,  music,  current  events,  great 
movements  of  human  welfare.  They  do  not  seem 
interested  in  new  ways  and  means  for  house- 
keeping. They  can  talk  about  matinee  idols, 
clothes,  movie  stars,  sensational  novels,  and  tliey 
can  gossip.  These  girls  are  receiving  the  training 
which  will  later,  if  they  make  homes,  lead  them 
into  the  group  of  kind-hearted,  easy-going,  self- 
centered,  inefficient  women  who  live  right  up  to 
the  limit  of  their  husbands'  incomes  and  some- 
times beyond  them,  who  have  no  idea  of  thrift, 
of  duty  or  obligation  to  the  community,  no 
thought  of  preparation  for  the  future.  Save 
that  they  help  do  the  work  in  the  home,  these 
girls  contribute  as  little  to  the  world's  burden 
of  work  and  life,  as  little  to  its  real  pleasure  and 
happiness  as  do  their  sisters  of  larger  means, 
whom,  as  a  rule,  they  envy. 

Over  against  these  girls  at  home,  as  in  every 
other  group  into  which  girls  may  be  divided, 


The  Girl  at  Homt  117 

one  finds,  in  homes  of  large  incomes  and  small* 
the  girls  from  eighteen  to  twenty-five  whose 
strong,  wise  mothers  and  sane  fathers  are  direct- 
ing their  daughters'  energies  into  channels  of 
real  service  and  usefulness,  giving  them  plenty 
of  wholesome  pleasure,  encouraging  them  in 
attempts  to  find  their  places  in  a  world  big 
enough,  varied  enough  and  needy  enough  to 
demand  the  service  of  all.  America  is  rich  in 
service  that  is  invaluable,  being  contributed  by 
girls  who  have  lost  the  first  intensive  interest  in 
society's  treadmill  and  have  not  yet  seen  enough 
of  life  to  make  them  certain  as  to  where  they  may 
best  put  themselves. 

Interests  deep,  intense  and  real  the  American 
girl  at  home  from  eighteen  to  twenty-five  must 
have  if  she  is  to  keep  normal,  well  and  happy. 
The  war  has  revealed  in  a  few  months  all  her 
pent-up  eagerness  for  a  place  in  the  world's  work. 
Girls  eighteen  to  twenty-five  are  very  eager  for 
worth-while  things  to  do.  With  some  it  is  of 
course  a  fad, — the  thing  to  do, — and  they  will 
not  assume  difficult  tasks  or  training,  nor  will 
they  stand  by.  They  belong  to  the  group  eager, 
as  one  girl  expressed  it,  "to  have  a  wonderful 
ball  or  a  great  pageant  or  some  theatricals  to 
which  every  one  would  come,  and  we  could  give 


118    Th*  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

the  money  for  candy  or  kits  or  something  for  th« 
soldiers.  The  rehearsals  would  be  such  fun!" 
They  are  willing  to  work  hard  having  a  good 
time,  the  surplus  money  to  be  devoted  to  some 
object  needing  help.  Usually  the  surplus  is 
small,  but  that  does  not  keep  them  from  further 
efforts.  But  with  most  it  is  not  a  fad.  They 
are  dead  in  earnest.  They  are  working  without 
pay  eight  or  ten  hours.  They  are  willing,  if  the 
need  shall  come,  to  take  the  places  in  industry 
left  vacant  by  lack  of  man-power,  they  are  train- 
ing in  hospitals,  in  first-aid  stations,  as  stenog- 
raphers and  accountants,  hoping  to  be  really 
needed.  They  are  not  doing  it  for  praise,  nor  for 
a  halo,  nor  for  credit,  nor  as  "society  girls." 
They  are  doing  it  in  answer  to  need. 

A  small  group  of  girls  in  one  of  our  great  cities, 
seeing  the  necessity  for  standing  together,  laid 
far-reaching  plans  for  a  league  of  girlhood  that 
promised  real  service.  Because  of  the  prominence 
of  their  families,  hints  regarding  the  organiza- 
tion appeared  on  the  "society  page"  in  the  lead- 
ing papers.  Two  of  the  girls  sought  out  the 
editors  of  those  papers,  assured  them  that  this 
was  not  a  "society"  event,  that  it  had  no  place 
on  that  page,  that  it  was  a  movement  of  all  the 
girls  to  get  together  and  itand  together  for 


The  Girl  at  Home 

the  good  of  ally  and  asked  that  it  b«  treated  as 
an  important  civic  and  community  matter.  Th« 
men,  impressed  by  the  earnestness  and  sincerity 
of  the  girls,  treated  the  movement  with  dignity 
and  the  result  was  marvelous.  The  girls  of  the 
city,  the  whole  city,  in  every  phase  of  its  life, 
five  thousand  of  them,  did  get  together,  and  the 
work  organized  is  meaning  much  in  that  city't 
life.  The  spirit  of  genuine  and  sincere  effort  on 
the  part  of  girls  to  get  together  and  in  mutual 
appreciation  each  of  the  other  to  accomplish 
things  is  one  of  the  great  indications  of  the 
coming  of  the  new  order. 

It  may  be  that  in  time  the  "society  page"  will 
disappear  from  the  daily  press,  that  the  public 
will  cease  to  display  any  interest  whatever  in 
that  part  of  its  constituency  which  takes  without 
a  fair  and  just  return.  When  that  time  comes, 
the  girl  at  home  will  have  found  adequate  em- 
ployment for  her  talents  and  energies,  will  have 
found  happiness  as  well,  and,  added  to  all  that, 
will  be  in  training  for  her  part  in  the  greatest, 
best  and  finest  of  all  the  tasks  which  can  come  to 
a  girl,  that  of  making  for  herself  a  borne  fit  for 
the  children  who  will  be  the  world  of  tomorrow. 


IX 

THE  COMMUNITY— DEBTOR 
AND  CREDITOR 


THE    COMMUNITY— DEBTOR   AND 
CREDITOR 

I    BELIEVE  that  every  community,  be  it  vil- 
lage, town  or  city,  is  a  debtor  to  its  youth. 
There  are  certain  things  which  it  owes  to  a 
girl  from  the  moment  she  comes  into  it,  helpless 
and  dependent,  until  the  time  when  she  is  fitted  to 
assume  her  full  share  of  responsibility. 

The  average  community  is  ignorant  of  that 
debt,  is  indifferent  to  it  or  unwilling  to  pay  it. 
America  has  needed,  for  a  long  time,  a  campaign 
of  education  regarding  its  debts.  There  have 
been  many  sporadic  and  spasmodic  attempts 
which  have  opened  the  door  and  paved  the  way 
for  a  more  intelligent  and  definite  plan  by 
which  all  communities  may  be  led  to  pay  their 
debts.  The  Child  Welfare  Bureau  established 
at  Washington  in  nineteen  hundred  twelve  is  the 
one  big,  hopeful  sign  that  the  nation  is  stirring 
in  its  sleep.  But  although  progress  has  been 
made,  there  is  still  on  the  part  of  many  communi- 
ties less  interest  in  propaganda  regarding  the 
housing,  feeding,  clothing  and  training  of  chil- 
dren than  in  any  other  phase  of  community  life. 


124    Tht  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

I  saw  not  long  since  a  great  gathering  of  men 
who  met  to  witness  a  demonstration  of  hog-rais- 
ing. They  willingly  gave  time  for  the  necessary 
travel,  money  for  tickets  and  other  expenses ;  they 
studied  charts  with  great  interest  and  listened 
eagerly  to  addresses.  The  majority  of  these 
men  were  fathers  of  children,  but  that  night  they 
went  contentedly  to  their  homes  enthusiastic 
about  what  they  had  learned  regarding  hogs, 
and  less  than  a  dozen  of  them  attended  a  well- 
advertised  and  carefully  planned  child  welfare 
conference,  led  and  addressed  by  experts  on  child 
conservation. 

Men  and  women  follow  their  lines  of  interest. 
They  willingly  give  time  and  money  for  that 
which  seems  to  them  important.  They  make  the 
greatest  sacrifices  for  those  things  that  seem  to 
them  to  be  of  supreme  importance.  The  Ameri- 
can community  does  not  yet  believe  the  conserva- 
tion and  development  of  its  childhood  to  be  of 
supreme  importance.  Only  persistent,  unremit- 
ting education  and  continual  propaganda  can 
bring  it  to  the  place  where  it  puts  the  proper 
relative  value  on  children,  hogs,  cattle  and 
money.  The  present  moment,  when  the  great 
world  struggle  is  helping  men  readjust  their 
scale  of  values,  is  a  good  time  in  which  to  launch 


The  Community — Debtor  and  Creditor     125 

plans  for  educating  the  public  to  believe  that  the 
most  important  product  of  any  community  is  its 
childhood;  that  it  owes  a  debt,  in  many  instances 
an  enormous  debt,  to  its  youth,  and  that  if  it 
hopes  for  a  future  nation  equal  to  the  mighty 
tasks  that  will  await  it,  the  debt  must  be  paid. 

Rather  than  enumerate  the  varied  forms  which 
that  debt  assumes,  I  am  going  to  reproduce  here 
a  few  short  paragraphs  written  by  girls  them- 
selves. 

It  was  during  a  summer  conference  before 
America  entered  the  war  that  I  asked  the  girls 
ranging  in  age  from  fifteen  to  nineteen  to  write 
for  me  one  hundred  and  fifty  to  two  hundred  words 
on  the  subjects,  "What  America  Owes  Me"  and 
"What  I  Owe  to  America."  I  said  we  would 
personify  America  and  we  would  address  what- 
ever we  wrote  to  her  directly  as  if  presenting  a 
case;  that  we  would  begin  in  this  fashion:  "It  is 
my  sincere  belief,  O  America,  that  there  are  cer- 
tain things  which  you  owe  to  me.  I  believe  that 
you  owe  me — "  and  then  make  our  statements 
clearly.  Some  of  the  papers  follow: 

"I  believe  that  you  owe  me  more  room  to  live 
in.  I  never  thought  so  much  about  it  until  I 
eame  up  here.  I  have  often  wished  to  be  by 


126    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

myself  but  there  was  no  place.  Up  here  it  is 
beautiful  and  you  think  about  so  many  things 
you  never  thought  of  before.  It  seems  as  if 
there  shouldn't  always  be  a  crowd  around,  in  the 
factory  and  in  the  street  and  in  the  house,  al- 
ways a  noise  and  quarreling  and  talking.  I've 
got  a  little  sister  four  years  old  and  since  I've 
been  up  here  I've  been  thinking  that  she  ought 
not  to  have  to  see  and  hear  all  the  things  she 
does.  It's  terrible  and  I  had  to  see  them  too. 
I  don't  see  how  it  can  be  managed  but  I  think 
we  ought  to  have  more  room  We  could  keep 
clean  easier.  And  you  owe  it  to  lots  of  us  to  get 
rid  of  drink.  It  gets  our  men  sooner  or  later. 
I  think  it  makes  women  dirty  and  lazy.  There 
are  plenty  of  saloons  where  I  live,  but  there 
isn't  a  saloon  in  this  place  and  I  ain't  heard  a 
quarrel  or  anything  like  it  since  I  came.  It 
don't  seem  right  to  have  to  live  where  things  are 
like  they  are  at  home.  And  then  we  ought  to  get 
more  pay  for  our  work  or  else  get  things 
cheaper.  I  don't  suppose  any  of  these  things 
can  be  done  but  it  seems  to  me  it's  what  is  owed 
us.  I  don't  know  if  I'd  be  good  if  I  could  have 
these  things  the  way  I'd  like  them  but  I  know 
I've  been  a  different  girl  this  week  and  I  am 
sure  if  I  could  live  like  this  I'd  be  a  good  deal 
better  off."  (A  girl  of  seventeen  living  in  a 
crowded  section  of  a  great  city  and  -working  in 
a  cartel  factory.) 


The  Community — Debtor  and  Creditor     127 

"It  is  my  sincere  belief,  O  America,  that  there 
are  certain  things  which  you  owe  me.  I  believe 
you  owe  me  an  education.  No  one  will  ever 
know  how  much  I  want  it.  I  do  not  want  to 
stop  school  now.  My  mother  could  get  along 
without  me  and  she  is  willing.  It  would  be  all 
right  if  I  had  relatives  in  the  city  where  I  could 
stay  but  I  haven't.  Father  says  he  would  be 
glad  to  borrow  money  to  pay  my  board  if  he 
could  but  he  doesn't  know  any  one  to  borrow 
from.  My  best  friend  is  going  into  the  city  next 
year  to  school.  Then  she  will  go  to  the  normal 
school  and  teach.  That  is  what  I  want  to  do. 
I  could  manage  about  clothes  because  I'm  not 
proud.  But  father  simply  cannot  pay  my  board. 
I  think  America  owes  a  girl  an  education  if  she 
wants  it  as  much  as  I  do  and  it  doesn't  seem 
right  because  you  have  to  live  in  a  little  country 
place  away  from  everything  that  you  can't  have 
an  education.  I'm  working  up  here  this  summer 
and  just  come  to  this  class.  I  am  going  to  try 
to  work  and  save  and  perhaps  in  two  years  I'll 
get  enough  to  start  but  you  forget  so  much  while 
you  are  working  and  you  get  so  old.  Our  state 
lets  women  vote  now  and  when  I  am  old  enough 
I  shall  vote  for  some  way  to  let  girls  have  an 
education  if  they  want  it."  (A  girl  of  fifteen, 
living  on  a.  small,  unprofitable  farm  several  milet 
from  the  railroad.) 


128    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

"I  do  not  believe  that  America  owes  me  any- 
thing which  she  has  not  given  me.  I  never 
thought  much  about  it  until  these  discussions  we 
have  each  morning  made  me  think.  I  have  a 
lovely  home  and  so  many  friends.  I  am  well 
and  have  all  the  pleasures  a  girl  could  want. 
Some  of  the  girls  I  have  met  up  here  have  none 
of  these  things.  I  cannot  help  asking  why  I 
should  have  so  much  for  they  are  brave  and  kind 
and  more  generous  than  I  am.  I  have  been 
thinking  about  it  a  great  deal  and  I  am  going  to 
write  on  the  second  topic."  {A  girl  of  seven- 
teen whose  home  offers  every  privilege  and 
advantage.) 

"I  do  not  know  whether  America  owes  me 
what  I  want  or  not  but  it  seems  to  me  that  some- 
body does.  My  mother  died  of  tuberculosis  when 
I  was  fourteen  and  I  left  school  to  take  care  of 
the  children.  There  were  four  younger  than  I. 
I  did  the  best  I  could  for  them  but  the  youngest 
one  who  had  always  been  very  delicate  died  of 
pneumonia  at  the  end  of  the  first  year.  I  missed 
her  terribly  and  it  was  awfully  hard  doing  the 
work  and  missing  my  mother  and  then  the  baby. 
The  two  boys  couldn't  help  much.  The  boy  next 
to  me  went  to  work  on  a  farm  as  soon  as  he  was 
fourteen  and  lived  there.  They  are  very  good 
to  him.  I  worked  day  and  night  to  keep  things 
nice  on  my  father's  pay  which  was  small.  Now 
I'm  'most  nineteen.  Last  month  he  got  married 


The  Community — Debtor  and  Creditor     129 

and  the  woman  he  married  don't  want  me.  She 
would  just  as  soon  have  the  other  two  who  are 
younger.  So  I've  got  to  find  work  and  a  place 
to  live.  I'm  not  fitted  to  do  anything.  I  haven't 
had  any  more  education  than  grammar  school. 
A  woman  in  the  church  where  I  go  sent  me  up 
here.  The  doctor  says  I  must  not  work  in  a 
factory  so  she  will  try  to  find  something  for  me 
to  do.  I'd  like  to  study.  I  might  be  a  nurse 
if  I  knew  a  little  more.  I  don't  suppose  Amer- 
ica owes  me  any  of  these  things  I  want  but 
neither  do  I  owe  her  anything.  I  guess  we're 
about  even." 

"I  believe  you  owe  me  a  good  time,  America.  I 
see  so  many  girls  my  age  having  such  good  times. 
I  love  to  be  outdoors.  It's  been  like  heaven  up 
here.  But  I  work  long  hours  and  it  takes  almost 
an  hour  to  get  home.  By  the  time  I  get  supper 
it's  dark.  The  place  where  I  live  is  awfully 
pokey.  There  is  nothing  doing  and  I  can't 
afford  to  stay  in  town  as  some  of  the  girls  do. 
I've  got  acquainted  with  some  boys  who  go  in 
and  out  on  my  train  and  once  in  a  while  they 
ask  me  to  something  but  I  can't  ask  them  to  the 
house  because  it  isn't  convenient  and  my  mother 
doesn't  like  it.  So  I  just  work  and  have  as  much 
fun  as  I  can.  But  I  believe  every  girl  ought  to 
have  a  good  time  while  she's  young.  I'll  be 
eighteen  my  next  birthday." 


130    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

As  I  read  over  the  papers  out  under  the  trees 
that  glorious  summer  day,  it  seemed  to  me  that 
the  things  these  two  hundred  girls  requested  of 
America  were  in  the  main  quite  fair.  A  great 
many  girls  expressed  the  thought  that  America 
had  given  them  their  full  share  of  life's  good 
things,  and  the  others  expressed  the  feeling  that 
some  one  owed  them  what  life  had  denied — a  fair 
chance. 

I  believe  that  America  does  owe  to  every  girl 
what  the  girl  in  the  paragraph  first  quoted 
struggles  to  express.  She  cannot  discuss  the 
moral  menace  of  overcrowding  and  its  dangers 
to  health,  but  she  feels  it;  she  resents  the  saloon, 
not  because  she  realizes  in  any  very  large  way  its 
effect  upon  the  life  of  the  nation,  but  because 
she  has  seen  what  follows  in  its  wake  in  the  place 
where  she  lives;  she  could  not  argue  on  economic 
conditions,  but  she  feels  that  a  dollar  ought  to 
have  larger  purchasing  value;  she  does  not  even 
lay  the  responsibility  for  her  moral  failures, 
whatever  they  are,  upon  these  disadvantages  of 
environment,  but  she  vaguely  senses  the  fact  that 
environment  does  make  a  difference. 

America  is  a  debtor.  She  is  a  debtor  to  this 
girl  and  others  like  her  just  as  long  as  the  com- 
munity permits  overcrowding  and  unwholesome, 


The  Community — Debtor  and  Creditor     131 

inadequate  housing  conditions.  Of  late  America 
has  been  partly  conscious  of  this  debt  and  has 
here  and  there  acknowledged  it  by  extending 
park  systems,  setting  apart  streets  for  play- 
grounds and  establishing  roof  gardens  and 
municipal  piers.  America  is  a  debtor  to  this 
girl  and  others  like  her  just  as  long  as  she  per- 
mits the  saloon  to  invade  the  neighborhood  where 
the  girl  must  make  her  home  and  forces  the 
menace  of  its  temptations,  with  all  the  dire 
physical  and  moral  consequences,  upon  the  men 
and  boys  who  make  up  her  family  and  friends. 
America  owes  her  and  others  like  her  the  protec- 
tion of  surroundings  that  make  for  clean  physical 
manhood  and  womanhood.  The  saloon  never 
creates  such  surroundings. 

America  is  in  debt  to  her  girlhood  as  long  as 
communities  permit  an  unreasonable  difference 
between  compensation  received  for  labor  and  the 
cost  of  living.  She  is  acknowledging  a  few  of 
these  debts,  and  now  and  then  arises  to  struggle 
for  justice  against  great  odds. 

In  fact,  girlhood,  for  so  long  at  great  disad- 
vantage, for  so  long  a  creditor  who  could  not 
collect,  may  feel  a  thrill  of  hope.  Present-day 
girlhood  will  not  receive  payment  in  full,  but 
will  see  the  dawn  of  the  new  day  and  share  in  it. 


132    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

America  has  found  that  she  can  pull  herself  to- 
gether and  act  as  a  unit,  and  when  the  present 
conflict  is  over  and  democracy  has  won,  she  will 
use  that  new-found  united  force  upon  some 
things  in  her  own  community  life.  The  most 
promising  thing  about  America  is  that  when  she 
tees,  she  acts.  She  is  often  slow  in  seeing  and 
she  pays  dearly  for  it.  The  duty  of  those  who 
do  see  is  plain — they  must  make  America  see. 
As  we  have  said,  there  must  be  a  campaign  of 
education. 

I  believe  that  the  girl  who  dimly  felt  that  there 
ought  to  be  a  way  by  which  she  could  complete 
her  education,  even  if  she  did  chance  to  be  born 
in  an  isolated  community  with  very  limited  re- 
sources, is  right.  I  think  America  is  a  debtor  to 
every  bright,  eager  girl,  hungry  for  knowledge 
and  consumed  with  a  desire  for  study.  I  am  glad 
that  some  day  she  "will  vote  for  it."  It  is  not  a 
thin£  impossible  to  grant.  America  acknowl- 
edges that  an  educated,  intelligent,  liberty-loving 
people  is  the  greatest  asset  of  any  nation.  She 
has  far  too  large  a  proportion  of  illiterates  now, 
and  she  has  too  small  a  proportion  of  those  who 
can  claim  a  liberal  education.  Great  as  has  been 
her  educational  system,  it  has  not  3ret  reached 
its  maximum  power.  The  girl  in  the  paragraph 


Tht  Community — Debtor  and  Creditor    131 

quoted  is  not  alone.  She  could  command  a  fair- 
sized  army  if  she  called  to  her  side  all  the  girli 
in  America  who,  like  herself,  "do  not  want  to 
stop  school."  America  will  continue  to  be  debtor 
to  these  girls  and  their  brothers  until  it  solves 
the  problem  and  finds  a  way  to  give  them  their 
worthy  desire. 

I  believe  that  America  owes  a  debt  to  the  girl 
who,  at  nineteen,  after  giving  the  five  years  of 
her  fresh,  young  girlhood  to  the  hard  task  of 
preserving  a  home,  finds  herself  thrown  upon  her 
own  untrained  resources.  Any  one  who  has  been 
in  a  position  to  receive  the  confidences  of  girls 
knows  what  a  multitude  of  shattered  hopes  and 
dreams  follows  in  the  wake  of  accident  or  death 
which  robs  the  home  of  father  or  mother  and 
leaves  the  heavy  burden  of  support  or  home- 
keeping  upon  the  young  shoulders  of  the  eldest 
boy  or  girl.  Then  when  the  younger  children  are 
self-supporting,  or  through  marriage  the  home 
is  again  able  to  care  for  itself,  these  young 
burden-bearers  are  set  adrift,  unable  to  fill  the 
places  which  might  easily  have  been  theirs  had 
they  been  given  opportunity  for  training.  Just 
what  the  community  can  do  for  these  victims  of 
circumstances,  no  one  at  the  moment  is  able  to  de- 
cide, but  when  once  it  believes  that  it  owes  a  debt 


184    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

to  youth,  when  it  accepts  the  fact  that  the  con- 
servation of  every  atom  of  human  power  is  its 
supreme  task,  no  life  which  can  by  training 
be  fitted  to  earn  an  adequate  and  satisfactory 
livelihood  and  to  contribute  to  the  general  wel- 
fare of  society  will  be  left  to  waste  the  years  in 
trying  to  find  a  place  to  "fit  in."  The  girl  who 
faithfully  struggled  through  five  years  to  keep 
a  home  has  many  of  the  best  qualifications  of  a 
nurse.  The  community  could  do  no  better  act 
than  to  provide  for  her  special  training  with 
opportunity  for  a  regular  course  later  on  if  she 
can  prove  her  worth.  As  it  is,  discontented  and 
half  developed,  she  will  try  first  this  thing,  then 
that,  either  to  find  her  place  accidentally  or  to 
settle  down  in  resignation  to  give  service  which, 
because  it  is  not  suitable,  is  but  half-hearted  at 
best.  The  conservation  of  the  powers  of  American 
youth  is  not  an  act  of  charity,  it  is  an  act  of 
justice,  common  sense  and  true  patriotism. 
The  day  will  come  when  the  community,  through 
some  definite  and  responsible  agency,  will  make 
self-supporting,  useful  and  happy  citizens  out  of 
its  unfortunate  victims  of  accident,  disease,  sin 
and  poverty.  That  is,  it  will  make  intelligent 
connections  between  the  work  of  the  world  that 


The  Community — Debtor  and  Creditor     185 

must  be  done  and  the  people  who  can,  if  trained 
and  directed,  best  do  it. 

America  owes  a  debt  to  every  girl  born  under 
its  flag  or  seeking  refuge  in  its  free  democracy. 
America  has  the  proud  record  of  a  nation  that 
pays  its  debts.  I  believe  that,  becoming  rapidly 
conscious  of  this  particular  debt,  the  present 
generation  will  not  pass  before  she  sets  in  motion 
machinery  adequate  to  the  task  of  paying  it. 

When  I  began  to  look  through  the  papers  on 
"What  I  Owe  to  America,"  with  renewed  convic- 
tion I  told  my  soul  that  the  American  girl,  made 
up  of  all  the  daughters  of  all  the  people,  despite 
her  apparent  frivolous,  careless  irresponsibility, 
is  deeply  loyal  and  has  great  capacity  for  sacri- 
fice for  her  country  if  the  need  should  come.  I 
did  not  dream  then  that  any  immediate  test  of 
loyalty  would  come.  Now  it  is  here  and  she  is 
measuring  up  to  its  call.  That  summer  afternoon 
I  read: 

"I  believe  that  every  girl  owes  something  to 
America.  She  can  be  happier  in  America  than 
anywhere  in  the  world.  She  has  the  privilege 
of  an  education  and  it  is  easier  to  get  it  than 
anywhere  else  in  the  world.  People  respect  her 
if  she  works  and  she  has  many  kinds  of  work  to 
choose  from.  I  believe  every  girl  owes  it  to  her 


136    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

country  to  obey  the  laws  and  to  do  right  so  that 
the  country  can  go  on  growing  greater  every 
year."  (A  girl  of  fifteen  attending  a  business 
college.) 

"As  I  said  in  writing  on  the  first  topic,  I  do 
not  believe  that  America  owes  me  anything  for 
I  have  so  much.  But  I've  been  thinking  lately 
and  especially  since  coming  up  here  that  I  owe 
her  a  great  deal.  I  believe  that  I  ought  to  help 
girls  who  are  less  fortunate  than  I  and  little 
children  who  have  hardly  enough  food  and  cloth- 
ing. I  think  it  is  true  that  America  is  so  large 
and  has  so  many  problems  that  she  has  a  right 
to  ask  for  help  from  those  who  have  everything. 
I  believe  that  I  owe  America  any  service  I  can 
give  to  the  people  who  need  help.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve it  is  right  for  me  to  be  so  extravagant  and 
to  think  just  about  myself.  I  do  not  know  what 
I  shall  do  for  I  am  still  in  school  but  I  am  going 
to  study  about  these  things  and  next  year  I  am 

going  to  try  to  help  America,  as  Mr.  D said 

the  other  day,  'live  up  to  her  ideals  of  liberty, 
justice  and  happiness  for  every  one.'  I  know  I 
owe  America  a  share  in  all  the  good  things 
I  hare."  (The  seventeen-year-old  girl  -who  said 
America  owed  nothing  to  her.) 

"I  owe  America  all   I   have  because  I   came 

from  to  this  country  when  I  was  a  baby. 

My  brothers  and  sisters  were  all  born  here.  My 
father  and  mother  have  worked  hard  and  they 


The  Community — Debtor  and  Creditor    137 

have  done  very  well.  I  graduated  from  the  high 
school  this  year.  If  I  were  a  very  good  scholar 
I  could  go  to  college  but  my  brother  is  so  much 
smarter  than  I  am  that  he  is  going  and  I  am 
going  to  try  the  civil  service  examinations  and 
do  office  work.  I  have  taken  the  commercial 

course  in  the  high  school  at  where  we  all 

go  to  school.  My  father  has  a  farm  and  that  is 
the  way  he  has  earned  money  and  he  is  a  car- 
penter and  builder.  If  we  had  stayed  in  -  — , 
my  brothers  when  they  grew  up  would  have  to 
serve  in  the  army.  But  the  worst  thing,  my 
father  says,  is  the  taxes.  In  America  they  do 
not  take  all  you  have  for  taxes.  You  can  harvest 
your  own  crops  and  you  do  not  have  to  report 
them.  When  my  father  was  a  young  man,  my 
grandfather  had  a  fine  crop  all  ready  to  harvest 
and  one  of  the  big  land-owners  had  a  big  crop. 
He  said  that  all  the  men  must  come  and  harvest 
his  crop  and  my  grandfather  and  my  father  had 
to  go  and  leave  their  own  crop.  The  women 
could  not  harvest  it  alone  and  the  best  was 
spoiled,  so  my  grandfather  lost  his  crop  and  had 
to  pay  heavy  taxes  just  the  same.  That  winter 
he  had  to  buy  his  food.  That  happened  more 
than  once  but  in  this  country  it  never  happens. 
My  father  has  told  us  many  times  that  in  this 
country  we  all  have  a  chance.  If  the  boys  stay 
poor  it  will  be  their  own  fault.  This  is  the  Land 
of  Liberty.  So  I  owe  my  nice  home  and  the 
chance  to  choose  what  I  want  to  do  and  every- 


118    The  American  Girl  and  Htr  Community 

thing  I  hare  to  America  and  so  I  must  pay  her 
with  good  serrice  and  good  work  and  the  laws 
•he  asks  me  to  obey,  I  must  obey."  ( J  girl  of 
twenty  born  in  Germany.) 

The  other  papers,  I  find,  vary  little  in  expres- 
sion. The  girls  feel  that  they  owe  to  America 
their  "opportunity  for  an  education,"  "the 
chance  to  work,"  their  "many  pleasures,"  "all 
the  privileges  that  girls  of  most  other  countries 
do  not  enjoy."  In  payment  for  these  privileges 
they  pledge,  in  nearly  every  case,  service  and 
obedience  to  law.  Many  of  the  girls  from  homes 
where  every  advantage  has  been  theirs  express 
the  feeling  that  they  owe  it  to  America  to  help 
in  the  great  social  and  economic  problems.  All 
this  is  significant  to  me,  for  it  indicates  during 
the  ten  years  that  I  have  been  asking  girls  to 
write  on  these  topics  a  growing  sense  of  the 
feeling  of  responsibility  for  things  as  they  are 
and  as  they  ought  to  be,  on  the  part  of  every 
type  of  girl,  as  over  against  the  very  noticeable 
attitude  of  despair  of  ever  making  conditions 
•ny  better  on  the  part  of  girls  who  knew  the 
•truggles  and  burdens  of  life,  and  indifference  or 
unwillingness  to  assume  an}'  responsibility  on  the 
part  of  those  to  whom  life  had  given  much. 


Tht  Community — Debtor  and  Creditor     189 

Today  the  girl  who  is  a  burden-bearer  herself 
has  hope  for  her  younger  sisters.  She  has  deter- 
mination, too.  She  reads  along  lines  of  social 
problems  and  she  attends  lectures  that  deal  with 
the  relations  of  men  to  each  other.  She  talks  in 
high  school  about  community  civics,  she  has  a 
sense  of  her  own  value  and  power  in  American 
life  that  is  giving  to  her  the  self-respect  which 
adds  great  moral  force  to  her  life.  And  today 
the  girls  who  have  every  advantage  and  privilege 
are  conscious  of  a  very  definite  demand  that  some 
one  or  something  is  constantly  making  upon  mind 
and  conscience.  They  cannot  satisfy  that  de- 
mand with  occasional  gifts  of  money  that  mean 
little  sacrifice.  They  are  slowly  coming  to  the 
conclusion  and  seeking  in  numberless  ways  to 
express  it  that  taking  and  giving  no  return  is  un- 
democratic and  un-American.  They  are  asking 
of  themselves  not  only  "How  much  did  she  give?" 
but  "How  much  does  she  take?" 

Since  America  has  entered  the  war,  the  desire 
to  give  on  the  part  of  all  types  of  American  girl- 
hood has  found  a  means  of  expression,  and  it  is 
most  heartening  and  encouraging  to  sit  with  a 
group  of  girls  toiling  hard  in  the  factories,  a 
group  of  high-school  girls,  a  group  of  girls  in 
boarding  school  or  just  out,  and  hear  the  word* 


140    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

"duty,"  "we  ought,"  "if  we  only  could,"  "How 
can  we  truly  serve?"  "No  one  should  be  idle  now," 
"I  think  it  is  wicked  to  plan  a  selfish  summer  this 
year."  All  this  reveals  anew  the  fact  that  deep 
in  the  human  heart  a  sense  of  justice  and  a  desire 
to  be  of  use  is  unfailingly  written.  Great 
moments  call  for  its  expression.  In  the  accepted 
and  accustomed  ways  of  life  it  is  easily  lost.  But 
it  need  not  be  lost.  America  can  be  trained  to 
believe  that  called  of  God  as  she  is  to  demon- 
strate that  government  of  the  people,  by  the 
people,  for  the  people  can  endure,  she  must  estab- 
lish a  community  and  national  life  in  which  there 
are  none  who  shirk,  in  which  all  groups  will  to 
share  the  burdens  of  each  group  and  each  group 
shares  the  burdens  of  all.  America  can  be  edu- 
cated to  believe  in  the  potential  power  and  value 
of  every  human  life  within  her  borders,  and  in 
patience  and  perseverance  to  guide  and  direct 
that  human  life  into  the  place  where  it  shall 
serve  the  whole  and  find  happiness  for  itself  in 
the  serving. 

America  must,  then,  be  convinced  of  the  truth 
that  she  is  debtor  and  creditor  to  every  girl; 
that  she  owes  to  her  the  opportunity  for  the 
fullest  development  of  body,  mind  and  soul ;  that 
she  has  the  right  to  demand  that  in  return  for 


The  Community — Debtor  and  Creditor  141 

the  opportunity  given,  every  girl  shall  live  at  her 
best  and  contribute  her  full  share  to  the  good 
of  all. 

It  is,  after  all,  the  ideal  of  our  Lord,  which  he 
did  not  relinquish  even  in  persecution,  misunder- 
standing, or  facing  the  cross.  Not  on  the  basis 
of  master  and  servant  did  he  plan  his  Kingdom, 
but  on  the  basis  of  friend  with  friend,  neighbor 
with  neighbor,  each  serving  and  each  being  served. 

No  political  party  will  develop  this  sense  of  the 
community — debtor  and  creditor.  It  will  not 
come  on  clouds  of  glory,  nor  will  it  come  through 
any  great  upheaval.  It  will  come  through  the 
education  of  the  minds  and  consciences  of  the 
people,  of  all  the  people,  until  gradually  they 
come  to  desire  a  national  life  based  upon  a  fair 
exchange  of  what  each  has  to  give. 

When  it  does  come,  to  be  an  American  girl, 
young,  free,  full  of  life  and  hope,  will  be  to  share 
in  the  realization  of  human  happiness.  Every 
American  is  responsible  for  the  hastening  of  its 
coming. 


X 

THE  NEW  AMERICAN  GIRL 


THE   NEW   AMERICAN    GIRL 

LITERATURE  offers  no  more  fascinating 
study  of  the  change  and  development  of 
ideals  and  standards  than  that  given  in  its 
portrayal  of  girlhood.  There  was  a  time  in  lit- 
erature when  girlhood  was  an  unknown  quantity. 
The  child  appeared  occasionally  in  the  back- 
ground, the  woman  in  the  foreground,  the  girl 
was  lost  in  the  shadows.  When,  finally,  the 
girl  heroine  appeared,  she  was  not  only  a  por- 
trayal of  the  standards  by  which  her  own  age 
and  sex  were  to  be  judged,  but  a  revelation  of 
the  standards  and  characteristics  of  the  com- 
munity and  the  nation  of  which  she  was  a  part. 

The  delicate,  fragile,  sheltered,  timid  thing 
that  wept  and  fainted  upon  the  slightest  provoca- 
tion held  for  some  time  the  center  of  the  stage. 
She  was  the  faithful  portrayal  of  what  society 
believed  to  be  the  desirable  expression  of  refine- 
ment, the  subtle  acknowledgment  of  utter  de- 
pendence upon  the  strength  and  protection  of 
another.  Over  against  this  clinging,  helpless, 
physically  inefficient  girlhood,  the  reader  could 
most  easily  be  made  conscious  of  the  strength  and 


146    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

chivalry  of  young  manhood.  The  girl  of  that 
period  was  practically  dehumanized,  all  the  warm, 
natural,  free  expressions  of  human  emotion  were 
vulgar  and  common  and  must  be  portrayed  by 
girls  of  the  lower  and  serving  classes. 

Through  the  various  cycles  of  the  very  pious, 
over-conscientious,  painfully  religious  girl;  the 
martyr  girl  with  her  submission  to  suffering,  a 
submission  in  which  there  was  neither  reason  nor 
common  sense,  and  her  agonies  of  self-analysis 
and  penitence;  the  sentimental  girl  who  raved 
through  pages  of  rhapsody  on  mountains  and 
sea,  clouds  and  moon,  rivers  and  brooks,  and 
through  chapters  on  love;  the  frivolous  girl 
lost  in  an  ocean  of  mad  pleasure,  dress  and 
gayety,  we  follow  the  record.  The  girl  hungry 
for  knowledge  held  the  center  for  a  while,  and 
her  efforts  for  higher  education,  her  treatment 
at  the  hands  of  her  brothers  who  would  send 
her  back  to  the  kitchen  fireside,  while  she  strug- 
gled on  to  intellectual  freedom,  were  an  interest- 
ing revelation  of  progress. 

The  athletic  girl  followed.  She  was  at  least 
wholesome  and  refreshing,  but  she  wandered  far 
afield  before  society  reacted  and  brought  her 
back  to  a  sane  place  in  the  scheme  of  human 
development. 


Tlu  New  American  Girl  14T 

Then  came  the  problem  girl,  and  problems  of 
every  sort  flourished.  Now  she  was  very  rich 
and  very  beautiful,  discontented  and  unhappy, 
and  she  hungered  for  many  things.  Sometimes 
it  was  that  intangible  thing  known  as  a  career; 
sometimes  her  discontent  brought  her  to  the 
slums  to  live  with  the  victims  of  the  world's  neg- 
lect and  injustice.  Sometimes  her  hunger  drove 
her  to  seek  adventure,  and  she  horrified  friends, 
male  and  female,  by  joining  all  sorts  of  organiza- 
tions without  the  pale.  The  day  came  when  she 
was  a  suffragist,  and  against  the  background  of 
her  struggle  for  political  freedom  the  book  trade 
received  a  good  many  best-sellers  and  the  student 
of  human  nature  rich  material. 

Then  came  the  sex  problems,  and  as  the  girl 
in  the  center  of  the  stage  struggled  to  find  "her 
fullest  expression,"  one  by  one  all  the  laws  that 
the  ages  had  developed  for  the  protection  and 
well-being  of  the  human  race  were  set  aside 
and  we  saw  the  girl  a  believer  in  free  love,  trial 
marriage,  and  all  the  rest.  In  the  first  appear- 
ance of  girlhood  upon  the  pages  of  literature, 
fainting  in  her  parlor,  she  reached  for  smelling 
salts  and  was  borne  tenderly  away,  but  now  she 
appeared  at  the  cabaret,  at  the  races,  reached 


148    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

for  her  cigarette  or  lifted  her  glass  to  her  lips, 
and  became  "a  man  among  men." 

Meanwhile,  through  all  the  varied  stages,  the 
average  girl  -went  her  way.  She  loved,  she  mar- 
ried, she  held  her  children  in  her  arms,  she  en- 
joyed, she  suffered,  she  laughed  and  wept  and 
prayed,  or  if  for  scores  of  reasons  she  failed  of 
these  things,  she  sought  substitute  interests  and 
gave  her  share  of  service  to  the  world  through 
other  channels,  as  she  is  still  doing  at  this  moment. 

Nevertheless,  all  the  stages  and  changes  in  the 
process  of  the  development  of  a  larger  and  finer 
womanhood  have  left  their  stamp  upon  the  girl- 
hood of  the  present  day.  There  are  girls,  even 
in  this  present  da}7,  who  have  inherited  the 
physical  weaknesses  developed  in  those  years 
when  lack  of  exercise,  improper  dressing  and 
wrong  feeding  laid  the  foundation  for  ills  of 
which  the  peasant  girls  of  all  races  know  nothing. 
There  are  girls  of  the  present  hour  who  must 
struggle  against  the  desire  for  martyrdom,  the 
self-analysis,  the  supersensitiveness  which  have 
been  passed  down  the  centuries  from  that  period 
of  over-development.  There  are  girls  at  this 
hour  paying  the  price  for  those  years  of  struggle 
for  a  higher  education  which  won  some  very 
precious  things  and  lost  others.  There  are  girls 


The  New  American  Girl  149 

of  the  present  day  paying  for  the  exaggerated 
athletic  reaction,  and  there  are  multitudes  of 
girls  paying  the  price  for  the  over-emphasis  upon 
the  problems  of  sex  which  left  them  and  their 
brothers  stranded  upon  a  dangerous  sea  without 
pilot  or  anchor. 

All  that  the  girls  of  the  past  have  experienced, 
the  girls  of  the  present  in  greater  or  less  degree 
inherit,  and  that  is  why,  century  by  century  as 
the  race  develops,  girlhood  grows  more  complex, 
more  difficult  of  analysis,  harder  to  direct  into 
paths  that  will  insure  happiness. 

Then  how  dares  one  prophesy  as  to  the  girl 
that  is  to  be,  the  new  American  girl?  Perhaps 
one  would  not,  were  it  not  for  the  roar  of 
guns,  the  blaze  of  bursting  shells,  the  wild  hell 
across  the  sea  through  which  men  in  utter  self- 
forgetfulness  win  the  painful  way  to  liberty  for 
their  fellow  men.  Had  it  not  come,  I  do  not 
know  which  of  the  conflicting  forces  might  have 
dominated  girlhood.  But  for  the  past  year,  look- 
ing into  the  eager  faces  of  thousands  of  girls 
and  the  longing  faces  of  hundreds  of  women,  I 
am  quite  sure  of  the  new  American  girl:  There 
will  be  exceptions,  of  course,  as  there  must  always 
be,  but  in  the  main,  certain  things  will  be  true 
of  her. 


160    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

The  American  girl  ranging  from  fourteen  to 
twenty-one  years,  as  I  am  thinking  of  her,  is 
finding  new  paths  of  experience  and  expression 
so  rapidly  that  I  believe  she  not  only  reveals  the 
new  American  girl  of  the  present  but  indicates 
the  girl  of  the  future  whose  trend  of  action  she 
is  marking  out. 

I  believe  that  the  new  American  girl  will  not 
be  dominated  by  the  pronoun  7.  The  difference 
in  the  evidence  of  that  pronoun  this  past  year 
as  compared  with  other  years  is  most  significant. 
She  will  live  in  a  world  where  "they"  is  of  as  great 
importance  as  "I."  It  will  be  a  larger  world 
which  crowds  out  pettiness. 

"Think  of  the  girls  of  Belgium  and  northern 
France,"  said  an  eighteen-year-old  to  me  the 
other  day,  "and  then  think  of  us.  One  night 
last  week,  we  girls  were  talking  about  it  and  we 
were  saying  that  it  doesn't  seem  as  if  some  of  us 
were  worth  dying  for.  What  have  we  ever  done 
for  our  country  or  for  any  one?  Now  the  girls 

in  the Club  are  different.  They  have  always 

worked.  Some  of  them  support  mothers  and 
younger  children  and  all  support  themselves.  We 
must  find  something  to  do  or  be  trained  for  some- 
thing." 

I  hear  it  on  every  side  as  over  against  the  calm 


The  New  American  Girl  151 

discussion  of  where  "7  can  best  develop  my  tal- 
•nts,"  "find  the  most  enjoyment,"  "make  the  big- 
gest place  for  myself,"  of  other  years. 

The  new  American  girl,  not  in  a  wild  outburst 
of  enthusiasm  but  in  deep  determination,  seeks 
genuine  service.  She  does  not  seek  to  perform 
it  in  a  spirit  of  heroic  sacrifice  or  as  if  she  were 
doing  a  great  and  wonderful  thing,  or  as  a  mat- 
ter of  charity.  And  in  the  main  she  is  not  seeking 
it  because  "it  is  the  thing  to  do"  but  because  she 
has  become  suddenly  aware  of  the  fact  that  there 
is  work  to  be  done  and  only  a  coward  and  a  shirk 
will  fail  to  do  her  full  share.  The  new  American 
girl  will  be  a  contributor  to  American  life  and 
through  it  to  the  life  of  the  world. 

The  new  American  girl  will  continue  to  seek 
intellectual  freedom  and  development,  but  not  in 
the  feverish  spirit  in  which  her  sisters  sought  it 
in  years  when  it  was  a  thing  denied,  and  what 
she  can  now  enjoy  so  easily  had  to  be  won  by 
many  a  struggle  through  much  persecution.  She 
will  seek  it  because  she  wants  to  understand  the 
world's  needs  and  her  place  in  the  answering  of 
them.  It  has  been  very  stimulating,  this  month, 
to  hear  the  discussions  of  girls  who  next  fall  are 
going  to  college.  They  all  express  the  desire  to 
be  fitted  to  serve  wisely  and  well,  to  train  their 


1 52    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

minds  to  meet  great  problems.  "In  our  city," 
said  one  of  them,  "not  a  single  college-trained 
man  asked  for  exemption  and  most  volunteered 
for  service.  I  believe  the  same  would  be  true  of 
college  women.  My  father  says  that  a  trained 
man  sees  how  big  the  problems  are  and  knows  he 
must  share  them.  I  did  not  think  I  wanted  to  go 
to  college,  but  now  I  do,  for  I  want  to  be  able 
to  do  my  share  of  all  that  will  have  to  be  done." 

I  believe  she  expresses  the  new  spirit — a  sincere 
desire  to  be  ready  for  intelligent  service. 

The  new  American  girl  will  have  a  highly  de- 
veloped spirit  of  sacrifice,  but  there  will  be  in  it 
no  consciousness  of  martyrdom.  It  will  be  the 
sacrifice  that  many  girls  have  been  making  for 
generations,  plus  a  deep  sense  of  willingness.  I 
sat,  not  long  since,  with  a  girl  just  returning 
from  a  port  of  embarkation.  She  had  a  two- 
months-old  baby  in  her  arms.  She  had  made  a 
long,  hard  journey  east  to  show  the  young 
father  his  little  son.  "He  held  him  in  his  arms 
till  the  last  moment,"  she  said.  "He  adored  him 
even  more  than  I  do,  and  he  saw  him  only  two 
days."  As  we  talked,  she  revealed  her  willing- 
ness to  make  the  great  sacrifice,  to  let  that  man 
go  into  all  that  is  waiting  for  him.  I  do  not  see 
how  any  one  can  help  standing  amazed,  thrilled, 


The  New  American  Girl  153 

confident  of  the  future,  in  the  presence  of  girls 
of  the  type  one  finds  everywhere  these  days.  The 
new  American  girl  will  be  and  is  capable  of  a 
wonderful,  willing  sacrifice,  claiming  no  honor  for 
what  she  is  doing.  It  is  the  martyr  spirit  of  her 
sisters  of  the  past,  glorified  and  made  unselfish 
and  sane. 

The  new  American  girl  will  be  athletic  in  the 
sense  that  she  will  train  her  body  to  be  her 
servant.  She  will  make  it  act  intelligently.  If 
she  has  the  opportunity  for  out-of-door  exercise, 
she  will  take  it.  She  is  already  beginning  to  walk 
where  once  she  took  the  easy  way  and  rode.  The 
popularity  of  the  gymnasium  and  the  swimming- 
pools  shows  very  clearly  the  desire  on  the  part 
of  girls  for  good  physical  machinery  with  which 
to  work,  and  the  attendance  on  health  lectures, 
the  reading  of  books  on  subjects  relating  to  the 
care  of  the  body,  the  attention  being  given  by 
untrained  girls  to  the  rules  of  hygiene  as  regards 
food  and  sleep,  point  to  a  generation  just  ahead 
that  will  have  a  stronger  physical  life  than  that 
of  the  present. 

When  it  comes  to  the  matter  of  the  problem 
of  the  sexes,  one  cannot  prophesy  with  assurance. 
The  girls  of  the  present  generation  have  felt  the 
full  force  of  the  discussions  as  to  how  much  in- 


154    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

struction  and  information  should  be  given  them. 
They  have  been  the  experiment  stations  and 
have  been  dealt  with  in  varying  fashion.  They 
have  also  had  great  freedom,  and  they  have 
lived  through  a  period  in  which  appeals  to 
emotion  and  passion  have  been  constantly  made 
through  popular  types  of  plays,  dances  and 
motion  pictures.  During  this  period  there  has 
been  comparatively  little  to  demand  self-discipline 
and  self-restraint.  And  now  while  they  are  still 
half-informed  and  but  little  trained  in  self- 
restraint  and  self-control,  they  have  to  meet  the 
additional  strain  of  conditions  that  always  follow 
in  the  wake  of  war.  It  is  inevitable  that  some 
should  succumb.  Those  longing  most  to  help 
them  stand  up  under  the  strain  find  that  they 
must  themselves  experiment  as  to  ways  and  means. 
Those  with  the  needs  and  interests  of  the 
generation-to-be  pulling  at  their  heart-strings 
cannot  help  asking  questions  as  they  watch  girls 
of  eighteen  to  twenty-one  waving  good-bye  to 
long  lines  of  men  in  khaki  and  blue.  These  men 
ought  to  be  the  natural  mates  of  the  girls  who 
are  trying  so  hard  to  "send  them  away  with  a 
smile."  When  one  reads  that  the  weekly  casualty 
list  of  a  certain  date,  in  England  alone,  was 
nearly  forty-two  thousand,  and  knows  that 


The  New  American  Girl  155 

America  must  duplicate  it,  perhaps  for  years,  if 
the  war  continues,  he  feels  great  compassion  for 
the  girls  of  the  present  and  the  immediate  future, 
and  at  times  he  is  completely  staggered  by  the 
problems  that  cold  facts  present.  Then  he  goes 
back  to  the  girls  themselves  and  again  is  confi- 
dent that  the  new  American  girl  will  measure  up 
to  the  need  of  the  hour.  He  finds  that  she  is 
facing  some  facts  herself,  that  she  has  some  ideas 
as  to  what  should  be  taught  her.  It  is  from  the 
serious  discussion  of  young  women  from  twenty- 
five  to  thirty  that  I  have  gathered  certain  facts 
that  seem  to  me  well  worth  the  earnest  study  and 
consideration  of  those  who  hope  to  share  in  guid- 
ing girlhood  through  the  present  crisis  of  pain 
and  self-denial  into  the  years  of  happiness  that 
surely  are  ahead. 

First  of  all,  these  young  women  from  twenty- 
five  to  thirty  have  accepted  the  fact  that  there 
will  be  fewer  homes,  that  some  of  them  who  have 
looked  forward  to  home  life  must  forego  their 
dreams.  They  have  accepted  the  fact  that  there 
will  be  fewer  children  and  that  therefore  all 
child  life  must  be  conserved,  trained,  raised  to 
the  highest  level.  They  have  been  volunteering 
very  eagerly  for  child  conservation  work.  One 
young  woman  of  twenty-seven  has  taken  three 


156    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

little  children  from  three  broken  homes  to  care 
for  and  train,  as  her  patriotic  duty.  Others  will 
follow  her  example. 

Because  they  are  young  women  who  think,  they 
have  said  that  if  there  are  to  be  few  homes,  those 
that  are  made  must  be  of  the  finest  t}Tpe,  and  the 
girls  now  twelve  to  twenty  must  be  given  the  high- 
est standards — they  must  be  taught  the  fine  art  of 
home-making,  especially  those  who  have  had 
little  opportunity  through  observation  and  none 
through  training  to  see  what  a  home  ought  to  be. 

They  feel  that  here  is  a  great  work  for  them 
to  do,  and  that  if  they  are  denied  the  privilege 
of  making  homes  for  themselves,  they  can  serve 
indirectly  if  they  are  able  to  help  create  better 
homes  for  the  nation. 

They  speak  quite  frankly  in  regard  to  the 
problem  of  sex  instruction.  They  say  that  they 
do  not  believe  that  ignorance  on  any  subject  ever 
added  to  the  safety  of  any  individual.  They  be- 
lieve that  all  girls  should  know  the  facts  of  sex 
life  and  relationship;  that  definite,  clear-cut  in- 
struction which  satisfies  curiosity  should  be  given 
without  evasion,  sincerely  and  frankly ;  that  ques- 
tions should  be  answered  when  asked  and  other 
questions  anticipated ;  but  that  the  whole  matter 
of  sex  instruction  should  take  a  secondary  place 


The  New  American  Girl  157 

in  the  life  of  a  girl.  "While  one  acknowledges," 
said  one  young  woman  of  twenty-six  with  two 
children  of  her  own,  "that  matters  of  sex  form 
the  basis  of  the  relationship  between  men  and 
women,  it  is  a  very  small  part  of  the  whole  rela- 
tionship, and  if  a  girl  does  not  find  a  true  friend 
and  fine  companion  in  the  man  she  has  married, 
there  is  absolutely  no  hope  for  happiness.  I  think 
every  girl  ought  to  know  that." 

I  think  these  young  women  are  absolutely  right. 
I  believe  that  girls  before  their  teens  should  be 
given  a  few  definite  facts,  by  their  mothers  if 
possible;  if  not,  by  the  physical  director  in  the 
school  or  by  a  carefully  chosen  teacher.  Before 
the  teens  and  always  after  that,  I  believe  questions 
should  be  answered.  When  a  girl  is  fourteen  I  am 
sure  that  in  the  light  of  new  emotional  experiences 
other  and  more  definite  facts  should  be  given  to 
her  which  will  make  further  curiosity  and  ques- 
tioning negligible.  Then  she  should  be  given  pro- 
tection by  nation,  state,  city  and  home,  adequate 
opportunity  for  amusement,  recreation  and  asso- 
ciation with  boys  and  girls  under  wholesome  con- 
ditions, plenty  of  work  to  do,  and  opportunity 
to  have  any  special  interests  cultivated  and 
special  talents  trained.  If  these  things  are  done, 
they  will  go  a  long  way  toward  safeguarding  all 


158     The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

American  girlhood  even  in  times  of  unusual 
danger. 

I  believe  that  the  American  girl  should  know 
how  large  a  proportion  of  girls  who  enter  a  life 
of  prostitution  are  sub-normal,  lived  as  little 
children  in  overcrowded,  unsanitary  homes,  were 
the  victims  of  false  promises  or  of  ignorance  for 
which  they  have  to  pay  a  final,  awful  price;  that 
of  all  women  on  earth  they  are  most  to  be  pitied, 
and  of  all  things  on  earth  the  condition  which 
made  them  what  they  are  should  be  most  desper- 
ately fought.  I  believe  they  should  know  the 
deadly  menace  to  all  humanity  that  these  victims 
of  ignorance,  weakness  and  circumstances  have 
proven  to  be. 

I  believe  that  facts  should  be  given  to  girl- 
hood through  instruction,  not  through  the  mass 
meeting  or  the  public  address,  never  through 
certain  types  of  sentimental  literature,  in  itself 
vague  and  only  serving  to  stimulate  unhealthy 
curiosity.  When  the  home  is  unwilling  to  assume 
the  task  or  unable  to  undertake  it,  I  believe  there 
should  be  group  instruction,  the  groups  made  up 
of  girls  as  nearly  alike  in  age,  mental  ability  and 
environment  as  possible.  I  believe  that  the  woman 
who  gives  the  instruction  should  be  accurate  in 
statement  and,  no  matter  what  her  position,  of 


The  New  American  Girl  159 

attractive  personality  and  fine  sensibilities,  fully 
capable  of  every  normal  emotion  and  reaction,  a 
woman  who  has  won  the  control  and  restraint 
she  recommends  to  them.  She  should  never  be  the 
type  of  woman  who  impresses  the  girls  as  being 
"different." 

But  I  found  that  the  group  of  girls  discussing 
the  subject  believed  that  when  the  handicap  of 
ignorance  has  been  removed,  all  has  not  been 
done;  that  the  girl,  to  be  safe,  must  have  safe- 
guarding ideals;  that  the  girl  who  has  had  them 
from  earliest  childhood  is  safest,  but  that  even 
if  she  has  missed  them  then,  they  may  still  come 
to  her  with  a  mighty  grip  in  the  teens.  An  ideal 
is  the  most  vital  force  on  earth.  It  is  the 
character-making  or  destroying  force. 

The  girls  expressed  the  opinion  that  the 
strongest  pull  upward  comes  through  a  real  re- 
ligious experience,  and  I  agree  with  them  abso- 
lutely. It  does  not  so  much  matter  in  what  way 
the  experience  comes,  but  before  a  girl  can  reach 
the  surest  plane  of  safety  and  develop  from  a  girl 
who  needs  help  into  a  girl  who  gives  it,  I  believe 
she  must  have  a  spiritual  experience.  This  ex- 
perience cannot  come  to  a  Hebrew  girl  in  the 
same  way  that  it  comes  to  a  Christian,  or  to  a 
Protestant  girl  as  it  does  to  a  Catholic,  or  to  an 


160     The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

unchurched  girl  as  it  comes  to  a  girl  within  the 
Church,  but  it  can  come  to  every  girl  as  truly 
as  it  is  coming  now  to  the  men  in  the  trenches  arid 
in  the  camps,  whose  lives  have  been  remade,  en- 
riched and  ennobled  by  it.  But  it  must  be  a  real 
experience,  and  I  believe  it  to  be  the  duty  of  the 
Church  of  every  creed  and  name  to  expend  its 
very  soul  in  the  effort  to  give  American  girlhood 
the  spiritual  experience  which  will  call  her  to  the 
high  planes  of  sacrifice  and  devotion,  which  will 
keep  her  life  pure  and  her  soul  fired  with  a  pas- 
sion to  save  and  to  serve.  Such  inspired  service, 
unselfish  in  its  very  essence,  leaves  little  room  for 
ideals  that  give  the  downward  pull.  This  call 
of  the  Church  must  be  given  in  concrete  form, 
that  it  may  be  heard  by  every  girl,  no  matter 
what  her  handicaps  may  be,  and  it  must  be  reit- 
erated patiently,  that  those  who  miss  it  at  first 
shall  not  lose  it  altogether. 

We  have  only  just  begun  to  realize  the  compel- 
ling power  of  the  Church  in  action.  Shorn  of  all 
the  lesser  things  that  hide  its  heart  and  confuse 
those  whom  it  would  help,  the  Church  is  a  tre- 
mendous force  that  may  be  counted  upon  when 
used  as  its  Lord  and  Master  meant  it  to  be,  in 
the  service  of  all  mankind. 

This  supreme  task  of  the  Church,  the  awaken- 


The  New  American  Girl  161 

ing  of  the  spiritual  life  and  power,  will  not  wait. 
The  need  is  here,  the  girls  are  here,  the  hour  has 
come !  The  new  American  girl  is  being  made  now, 
and  what  we  want  her  to  be  must  be  determined 
now.  More  than  that,  what  we  make  now,  good 
or  bad,  will  endure  through  generations.  The 
Church  cannot  afford  to  make  mistakes. 

If,  in  the  midst  of  the  turmoil  of  the  near  and 
the  pressure  of  the  immediate  future  which  always 
narrows  one's  horizon,  I  am  tempted  to  doubt  the 
power  of  the  men  and  women  of  our  day  to  leave 
indelible  impressions  upon  the  children  who  are 
to  be  the  men  and  women  of  the  day  ahead,  I 
gather  up  the  facts  and  know  that  what  is  written 
in  wax  cannot  be  effaced  when  the  wax  has  hard- 
ened to  marble. 

I  read  again  with  deep  satisfaction  and  joy 
Daudet's  story  of  the  last  lesson  in  French.  I  can 
see  Monsieur  Hamel,  dressed  in  the  suit  he  wore 
only  on  great  days,  the  people  of  the  village  sad 
and  hushed,  the  ex-mayor  and  the  postmaster  re- 
spectful, with  arms  folded,  standing  about  the 
schoolroom.  I  can  hear  the  orders  of  the  Prus- 
sian commander  drilling  his  troops  in  the  square, 
and  then  the  teacher's  voice: 

"My  children,  this  is  the  last  time  that  I  shall 
teach  you.  Orders  have  come  from  Berlin  that 


162    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

nothing  but  German  shall  be  taught  in  the  schools 
of  Alsace  and  Lorraine.  The  new  teacher  arrives 
tomorrow.  This  is  the  last  class  in  French;  oh,  I 
beg  of  you  to  be  very  attentive." 

The  morning  wears  on,  and  the  children, 
usually  so  careless  in  their  studying,  toil  dili- 
gently; the  master,  often  impatient  with  their 
dulness,  seems  on  fire  with  the  passion  to  tell  them 
in  this  one  short  morning  all  he  knows.  At  last 
the  noon  hour  comes.  Prussian  bugles  blare,  then 
the  angelus  rings.  Monsieur  Hamel,  pale  as 
death,  rises  from  his  chair.  "My  friends,"  he 
says,  "my  friends,  I — I—  "  but  he  cannot  speak. 
He  turns  to  the  blackboard  and  writes  in  the 
largest  letters  he  can  make: 

"VivE  LA  FRANCE  !" 

Then  he  motions  with  his  hand,  and  the  chil- 
dren, their  eyes  resting  till  the  last  moment  upon 
the  words  on  the  board,  pass  slowly  out  of  the 
room.  They  will  never  see  those  words  in  their 
schoolroom  again.  Alsace-Lorraine  is  German. 

But  the  other  day  when  the  French  troops  that 
had  driven  back  the  German  army  from  a  section 
of  Alsace-Lorraine  entered  a  little  old  town,  the 
children  stood  in  the  schoolhouse  to  welcome  them. 
At  sight  of  the  officers'  uniforms,  a  little  girl  who 
had  been  taught  every  lesson  she  had  ever  had  in 


The  New  American  Girl  163 

school  by  a  German  teacher  and  in  the  German 
tongue,  cried  aloud  "Vive  la  France!"  and  an- 
other stepped  to  the  board  and  wrote  it : 

"Vive  la  France!" 

What  the  old  French  teacher  wrote  on  the 
board  that  last  day  burned  itself  into  the  souls 
of  his  pupils.  They  never  forgot.  They  learned 
to  speak  the  German  tongue,  but  they  kept  the 
French  heart,  and  now  from  their  children's  lips, 
after  a  generation,  the  burning  words  burst  forth. 

Yes,  I  am  sure  that  what  America  wants  the 
future  American  girl  to  be,  she  can  teach  her 
to  be  if  she  will.  There  are  no  forces  of  evil 
strong  enough,  anywhere  on  earth,  to  thwart  that 
will. 

Because  of  all  that  I  have  seen  and  heard  these 
past  months,  because  of  the  earnest  words  of 
loyalty  and  devotion  that  have  come  hot  from 
the  heart  of  girlhood,  because  of  a  thousand  acts 
of  kindness,  sacrifice  and  genuine  love  that  I  have 
witnessed,  because  of  the  simple  heroism  that  asks 
for  nothing  and  gives  all,  I  believe  that  the  new 
American  girl  will  be  more  nearly  normal,  natu- 
ral, well-balanced,  healthful  and  wholesome  than 
girlhood  has  ever  been  before.  The  new  American 
girl  will  be  keen,  alert,  intelligent,  more  efficient, 
more  able  to  work  together  with  her  fellows  than 


164    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

ever  before.  She  will  be  warm-hearted,  affection- 
ate, loving,  genuine.  She  will  be  minus  the  sham 
and  subterfuge  which  has  robbed  life  of  so  much 
charm  and  the  world  of  so  much  happiness.  She 
will  accept  the  duties  of  community  life,  eager  to 
do  her  full  share;  she  will  accept  the  duties  of 
the  home  as  they  come  to  her  without  fear  or 
dread.  I  believe  she  will  desire,  to  a  far  greater 
degree  than  have  the  girls  of  the  previous  genera- 
tion, to  share  with  the  man  she  loves  the  joys  and 
responsibilities  of  parenthood,  better  parenthood 
than  the  world  has  seen  before,  because  more  in- 
telligent and  more  fully  aware  of  the  fact  that 
earth's  richest  treasure,  the  most  precious  pos- 
session that  life  can  give,  is  a  child,  well  born 
and  started  upon  its  journey  without  a  handicap. 

I  believe  that  the  new  American  girl  will, 
through  her  religion,  find  her  God — find  in  him 
pardon  for  sin,  strength  in  weakness,  help  over 
hard  places,  sympathy  in  moments  of  great  joy, 
friendship  and  the  companionship  which,  begin- 
ning here,  makes  death  but  an  incident,  another 
turn  in  the  road  that  leads  to  more  abundant  life. 

I  greet  the  new  American  girl  with  faith  and 
hope.  I  know  that,  made  up  of  all  the  daughters 
of  all  the  people,  she  will  enrich  America's  soul, 
enlarge  her  power  and  develop  increasingly  in  her 


The  New  American  Girl  165 

the  steadiness  of  purpose  and  the  passion  for 
justice  that  will  keep  her  equal  to  the  task  of  a 
true  Democracy. 

AND  THE  COMMUNITY?     THE  COMMUNITY  DARE 
NOT  FAIL  THIS  NEW  AMERICAN  GIRL. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

No  attempt  has  been  made  to  furnish  a  complete 
or  adequate  bibliography  but  rather  to  place  before 
the  reader  a  few  of  the  books,  varying  greatly  in 
style,  which  since  nineteen  hundred  have  been  written 
regarding  the  girl  or  problems  that  touch  her  directly. 
Many  of  the  books  listed  have  very  comprehensive 
bibliographies  which  the  reader,  interested  to  study 
further  any  special  subject,  will  find  most  helpful. 
The  Pilgrim  Press  will  be  glad  to  furnish  prices, 
which  are  impossible  to  list  on  account  of  the  unsettled 
conditions  in  paper  and  book-making. 

BOOKS  RECOMMENDED  FOR  FURTHER 
READING 

I     THE  AMERICAN  GIRL 

The  City  Girl 

The  Long  Day.     Century. 

The  Promised  Land,  Mary  Antin.  Houghton 
Mifflin. 

One  of  Them,  Elizabeth  Hasanovitz.  Hough- 
ton  Mifflin. 

The  Business  of  Being  a  Woman,  Ida  M. 
Tarbell.  Macmillan. 

Saleswomen  in  Mercantile  Stores.  Russell 
Sage  Foundation. 

Wage  Earning  Women,  Annie  M.  Maclean. 
Macmillan. 


168    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

The  Work-a-Day  Girl,   Clara   E.   Laughlin. 

Revell. 

The  American  Girl,  Anne  Morgan.     Harper. 
The   Neglected   Girl,   Ruth   Trice.      Russell 

Sage  Foundation. 
Publications  of  National  Board  of  Y.  W.  C.  A. 

The  Rural  Girl 

The  American  Country  Girl,  Martha  Foote 

Crow.    Stokes. 
Farm  Boys  and  Girls,  William  A.  McKeever. 

Macmillan. 
Training   the    Girl,    William    A.    McKeever. 

Macmillan. 
Publications  of  National  Board  of  Y.  W.  C.  A. 

The  Schoolgirl 

Working  Girls  in  Evening  Schools.     Russell 

Sage   Foundation. 
The  High-School  Age,  Irving  King.     Bobbs- 

Merrill. 
Pamphlets  published  by  U.  S.  Department  of 

Education 
Pamphlets  published  by  National  Board  of 

Y.  W.  C.  A. 

II     COMMUNITY  PROBLEMS  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES 

The  Spirit  of  Youth  and  the  City  Streets, 

Jane  Addams.     Macmillan. 
A  New  Conscience  and  an  Ancient  Evil,  Jane 
Addams.     Macmillan. 


Bibliography      .  169 

Popular  Amusements,  Richard  H.  Edwards. 
Association  Press. 

Play  in  Education,  Joseph  Lee.     Macmillan. 

The  House  on  Henry  Street,  Lillian  D.  Wald. 
Holt. 

Young  Working  Girls,  Woods  and  Kennedy. 
Houghton  Mifflin. 

The  Wayward  Child,  Hannah  K.  Schoff. 
Bobbs-Merrill. 

Youth,  School,  and  Vacation,  Meyer  Bloom- 
field.  Houghton  Mifflin. 

Vocations  for  Girls,  Laselle  and  Wiley. 
Houghton  Mifflin. 

The  Survey.     Published  by  The  Survey  Pub- 
lishing Co.,  112  E.  19th  St.,  New  York  City. 
Books  reviewed  by  The  Survey  give  most 
recent  and  reliable  information  on  civic 
problems.     The  magazine     is  invalu- 
able for  all  interested  in  the  modern 
attempt  to  create  a  true  democracy. 

Ill  OTHER  BOOKS  SUGGESTIVE  TO  ALL  WORKERS 
WITH  ALL  GIRLS 

Girlhood  and  Character,  Mary  C.  Moxcey. 

The  Bent  Twig,  Dorothy  Canfield  Fisher. 
Holt. 

The  Sunday  School  and  the  Teens.  Inter- 
national Sunday  School  Association, 
Chicago. 

Education  in  Religion  and  Morals,  George  A. 
Coe.  Revell. 


170    The  American  Girl  and  Her  Community 

Religious  Education  in  the  Family,  Henry  F. 

Cope.     University  of  Chicago  Press. 
Sex  in  Life,  Dr.  and  Mrs.  D.  B.  Armstrong. 

American  Social  Hygiene  Association. 
Sex  Education,  Maurice  A.  Bigelow.     Mac- 

millan. 
The  Christian  Approach  to  Social  Morality. 

Y.  W.  C.  A. 

Life  Problems.     American  Medical  Associa- 
tion, Chicago. 
Towards   Racial   Health,   Norah   H.   March. 

Routledge.     Imported. 
The  American  Girl,  Winifred  Buck.     Mac- 

millan. 
Christian  Citizenship  for  Girls,  Helen  Tho- 

burn.    Y.  W.  C.  A. 

IV     OTHER  BOOKS  BY  THE  AUTHOR — PUBLISHED  BY 
THE  PILGRIM  PRESS 
The  Girl  in  Her  Teens 
The  Girl  and  Her  Religion 
The  Girls'  Book  of  Prayer 
Just  Over  the  Hill 


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